Gravity
by Elspeth1
Summary: Featuring a shellshocked auror and everybody's favorite werewolf. When the person you love is on the path to selfdestruction, it's hard to know whether to stay by them or let them go.
1. A Snapping Thread

**DISCLAIMER:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The song "1917," excerpts from which appear at the beginning and end of this fic, belongs to David Olney and Emmylou Harris.

Posted by: Elspeth (AKA Elspethdixon).

  
**Author notes:** Warning: This fic contains alcohol abuse. It also contains slashy themes. For those of you who have read "Scars" and are now hopelessly confused--think of this fic as occurring in some parallel universe in which all of the characters have the exact same personalities and backgrounds as they do in "Scars," but the sexuality of at least one of them is different.  After eleven chapters of Sirius and Remus het, I was no longer able to restrain myself, and this is the result.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Gravity

Part I: A Snapping Thread

_The strange young man who comes to me****__  
__A soldier on a three day spree****__  
__He needs one night's cheap ecstasy ****__  
__And someone's arms to hide him****__  
__He greets me with a courtly bow****__  
__And hides his pain by acting proud****__  
__He drinks too much and he laughs too loud****__  
__How can I deny him?****__  
  
_

**            Remus arrived at the Leaky Cauldron to see a familiar looking motorbike illegally parked out in front of the pub, a giant black Triumph with a red and gold Gryffindor tassel hanging off one handlebar and an anti-muggle charm placed over her to keep the police from ticketing her or towing her away.  Until a few moments ago, he had wondered why Tom, the Cauldron's owner/barkeep, had contacted him and asked him to come down to the pub—all he'd been able to get out of the man had been a few incoherent mumbles about "bloody aurors," and "astronomy," and "gives me the willies."  Now, he wondered no longer.**

            Remus pushed open the Cauldron's old wooden door, stepping out of the grey London day and into dark-paneled, tobacco-scented twilight.  The Cauldron was crowded tonight, witches and wizards and other patron less easily identified gathered around its scarred wooden tables drinking and socializing.  The atmosphere was redolent of alcohol and good fellowship, the slightly frenetic cheerfulness of people determined to forget the constant worries of a world at war.

            Tomorrow morning they would all return to their jobs as ministry clerks, mediwizards, shop owners, and journalists, but tonight, they were here to have a good time.  All, that is, except the young man at the bar.

            Rumpled gold and black auror's robes open over a black muggle t-shirt and jeans, dark hair straggling loose from its ponytail, he was slamming back shots of scotch with the silent, single-minded concentration of a man whose sole aim is to get very drunk, very quickly.

            "Oh God," Remus groaned inwardly.

            "Lupin," the balding bartender hailed him with relief.  "Thank God.  Get your auror friend to go home before he pulls his wand out and hexes half the bar.  I've had drunk aurors in here before; they're a bloody public menace."

            "He's not going to do anything, Tom," Remus sighed as he wound his way through the tables to the bar along the far wall.  Very carefully—one never, never snuck up on an auror, drunk or not—he approached his friend and placed one hand on a gold-clad shoulder.

            "Sirius?" 

            Sirius started violently, nearly falling off the barstool, before he looked up to see Remus bending over him.

            "Moony?" he asked, blinking and focusing on Remus with obvious difficulty. "What're you doin' 'ere?"  The East End accent that seven years at Hogwarts had so effectively diminished was back in full force; it always returned after a couple of drinks.

            "Just came in for a drink.  I saw you here and thought I'd come over and say hello."

            "Bloody liar, Tom called you up an' said fer you to come an' get me, didn' 'e?"

            "Well, yes," Remus admitted.  "I think you're scaring him.  He's probably never seen anyone drink so much and stay conscious."

            Sirius's mouth quirked into a bitter, lopsided smile.  "Always knew I was talented."

            "Some talent."__

            Remus shook his head, sighed, and sat down on the barstool next to Sirius.

            "Any particular reason you're trying to give yourself alcohol poisoning, or do you just feel particularly self-destructive today?"  He knew he sounded bitter, but he couldn't stand seeing his friend slowly tearing himself apart.  Being flatmates with an auror had some serious drawbacks—the long, odd hours, the fact that any auror's residence was an automatic target for Death Eater raids—but it was much easier than trying to find someone willing to rent to a werewolf, or attempting to pass as a muggle in order to get an apartment.  But Remus was no longer sure if he could keep dealing with the inevitable fall-out of his friend's job.  The nightmares, the hex marks, the worry when Sirius was forced to pull overtime or just plain didn't come home.  Constantly nagging at his mind was the insidious fear that one night, after a few two many scotches or rum-and-cokes, the Black Bitch and her rider would end up wrapped around a lamppost or a tree.  The thought of those long, lean limbs broken and tangled with shreds of twisted metal…

            "Hard day at work, y'know?" Sirius shrugged slightly, apparently oblivious to Remus's resentment, but picking up on his friend's concern.  "Don' worry, I'm fine.  No shoot-outs or duels or anythin', jus' a clean-up."  He paused, shuddered slightly, and then resumed speaking, voice full of forced cheer.  "I jus' felt like a drink, like havin' some fun.  You wanna join me?  Have somethin'?"  He generously nudged a barely-touched rum-and-coke in Remus's direction before turning his attention back to slowly lowering the level in the bottle of scotch in front of him.

            Remus eyed the brown, carbonated liquid with barely disguised disgust.  "You clean engine parts with that stuff.  I wouldn't drink it if you paid me.  And anyway, I'm not thirsty.  I'd rather hear about your clean-up job."

            "No, you wouldn'.  Drinking's much better.  Trust me on this."

            "Padfoot, tell me."  Remus laid a hand on Sirius's arm, arresting the shot glass halfway to his mouth.  "You went to investigate a raid site, right?"

            "Yeah, it was a sight, alright, but it wasn' a raid.  It was an interrogation, or recruitment drive, or somethin'."  Sirius turned to look at Remus, bloodshot blue eyes slightly out of focus.  "House in Hampstead, blasted to a shambles."  He gave a little laugh.  "We told the muggles it was an IRA bombin'.  Lucky it was near a tube station."

            Remus suddenly felt cold.  He'd seen an article in the _Evening Prophet about trouble in Hampstead.  "Werewolf Couple Tortured to Death for Refusing to Join Dark Lord" the banner headline had screamed.  He hadn't read more than a paragraph of the article; it had made him feel too paranoid.  __Sirius had been called in for that?_

            "Was it the Pearsons', Padfoot?  That place that was in the papers?"

            "It's in the papers?  Did they say anythin' about the kids?"

            "Kids?  What kids?"

            "The Pearsons' kids," Sirius mumbled.  "The ones that got AKed." He closed his eyes, leaned his face into his hand.  "Big gold eyes and silver streaked hair.  Would 'ave been cute if there weren't so much blood…  The older one…"  He looked up at Remus again.  "Pols was like ice, don' know how she does it.  When she told Snape to help lay out bodies—'e works at an apothecary's on Kemick Alley, righ' by there, got pulled in to 'elp—I thought 'e was gonna faint.  Even Ol' Mad-Eye looked sick." He turned to face Remus again, eyes staring past him at something unseen.

"They were only kids, Moony.  Jus' kids.  Bloody 'ell.  What kinda person does _that to a little girl?  And the woman…  They tortured 'er first, did y'know?  To get the 'usband to talk.  A werewolf… God, Moony, they put silver coins on 'er eyes.  Burned out 'oles, they were, just 'oles.  I've never seen anythin' so 'orrible."  Sirius's face was haunted, eyes distant and glazed with more than just alcohol.  "Blood all over," he whispered.  "All over everythin'."_

"Padfoot…"  Remus wanted to say something reassuring, something like "it's alright," but he knew that it was manifestly _not alright, that it wouldn't be "alright" again for a very long time.  Not until people stopped being murdered in the night, until the Dark Mark stopped appearing over the shells of burned out, blood-spattered houses.  There were times when he wondered if that day would ever arrive._

"Promise me," Sirius said suddenly, eyes moving back to Remus's face.  "I wan' 

you to promise me.  If they ever… ever come for you, promise you'll say yes.  I don' want 'em to burn your eyes out.  You have nice eyes, an' they shouldn' be burned out."

"Sirius-"

"Promise!"

"I can't promise something like that," Remus protested.  "I would never, ever join up with _them, no matter what.  And anyway," he added, seeing the unusual sincerity in Sirius's face, "they haven't contacted me yet.  Probably they never will. They know what I'd say."_

"An' that makes you a target.  Like James an' Lily, an' Peter, all workin' for the Ministry, an' me an' Pols, 'cause we're aurors.  But we all picked bein' targets, an' you didn', any more'n those kids did.  S'not fair."  He sighed, then gazed intently into his mostly empty glass, as if searching for something amid the remains of amber liquid.  "It ain't never gonna end, is it, Moony?" he asked softly, meditatively.  "Never, never, never.  Tomorrow it'll be someone else all dead an' bloody.  We're all locked in, like planets, going around and around…"  Sirius gestured a vague circle with his left hand, the lit end of his cigarette flickering as it swung through the air.  "Voldemort's like, like gravity.  He's got us, an' 'e won't let go."

"Like gravity," Remus echoed. Get a Black drunk, sit back, and learn about astronomy.  It never failed.  A drink or three and Sirius would start in on physics and star systems and a mass of other information that most people couldn't even remember when sober.

"Yeah, gravity, y'know?  An all-powerful force that you can't escape?  Even when you don' expect 'im, when you think things're un-, unaffected by 'im, like in some little muggle street in London, 'e shows up.  Kinda like gravity, there even when you think it's not, like in space."

            Remus was momentarily sidetracked.  "Padfoot," he said patiently, "there isn't any gravity in space.  That's why everything floats."

            " 'Course there is."  Sirius said.  He looked rather affronted that Remus would question his knowledge of things astronomical.  He had, after all, gotten a NEWT in astronomy.  "Gravity's the attraction between two bodies.  Not just between the earth an' the moon, like, but between everythin'.  Between stars, between galaxies, between, between this glass an' the bar.  Even between me an' you."  Sirius waved a hand expansively between himself and Remus.  "It's always there, the attraction, it's jus' it's usually too small for you to feel it.  But that doesn't mean it ain't there."  His eyes met Remus's for a moment and held them.  "It's always there."

            Remus felt a shiver run over his skin at the odd intensity in those eyes.  _Yes, he thought, __it is always there.  He shook his head, broke the eye contact.  Sirius was not talking about that kind of attraction._

"There's even an equation for it."  Sirius began tracing letters on the bar in spilled alcohol.  "See?  F=GMm/r^2.  'G's the gravitational constant, an' the 'm's are the two things, the two bodies, an' 'r's the distance.  So the closer you are, the stronger it is."  He looked up from his makeshift sketchboard--how the hell was he able to remember all those letters and symbols in this condition?--to meet Remus's eyes again.  "An' you n' me are closer to '_im, 'cause of my job an' your, your thing."  Even drunk, Sirius knew better than to mention Remus's lycanthropy in public.  "I don' want them doin' the sorta things to you that they did to that family.  I don' want those sorta things done to me."  He shuddered.  "I ain't scared of bein' 'exed, or AKed, but m'scared as Hell of bein' tortured."_

Remus could count on the fingers of one hand the times Sirius had actually admitted to being scared.  Sirius was always the brave one, the reckless one, the one who laughed--albeit rather hysterically on occasion--in the face of death.  But torture was something else all together.  He didn't blame any man for fearing the Death Eaters' wands and knives.  

"I'm not exactly fond of the prospect myself."

"Because I'd break," Sirius continued, meeting Remus's eyes with drunken earnestness.  "I know I would.  I'd tell 'em whatever they wanted.  An' then they'd go after James an' Lily.  An' Petey.  An' you.  An' I'd rather die than have that happen."

"It won't," Remus said firmly, staring straight into Sirius's bloodshot eyes, trying to fix the other man's attention on him.  "You would never betray any of us, any more than I'd work for Voldemort.  You couldn't do it.  For God's sake, there's a reason the Sorting Hat almost stuck you in Hufflepuff."  He shook his head.  He'd never heard Sirius sound like this before; drained and empty and filled with self-doubt.  When Sirius got upset, he yelled and hit things until the problem went away.  Or drank, lately.  There was more than one way of making your problems go away.  Even after the worst day on the job, the latest night in a bar, he'd always been silent, or loudly talkative about things that had nothing to do with whatever was bothering him.  Sirius did not share his problems with people, not the big ones, anyway.  _Today must have been very, very bad.  Remus shuddered inwardly, hearing again Sirius's incoherent ramblings about eyes and blood.  _

"Come on, Padfoot," Remus said, gently removing the empty glass from Sirius's right hand.  "I think we ought to leave.  Curfew starts soon, and we have to get home before it does."  Outside the dim world of the Cauldron, the sun would already be sinking below the horizon, and once true night fell, all wizards were required to be indoors, at home, not congregating in public places where Death Eaters could easily attack them.

"How we gonna get there?" Sirius asked muzzily.  "I've only got the one helmet."

"Oh, yes, that reminds me. _Accio motorbike keys."  Remus held up a hand to catch the Black Bitch's keys as they flew out of Sirius's pocket._

" 'Ey, I need those!" Sirius said indignantly, making a futile effort to catch the keys as they zipped by his face.

"No you don't."  Remus shoved the keys into one of the pockets in his robe.  "I'm going to apparate you."

He reached down and pulled Sirius to his feet.  The other wizard stood, swaying slightly, for a few seconds, before his knees buckled and he fell heavily against Remus, who moved just in time to slip the taller man's arm over his shoulders.  For someone as skinny as he was, Sirius was extremely heavy.

"Moony," Sirius mumbled into Remus's shoulder, "I think I oughta sit back down."

"Oh, no you don't.  Come on."  Remus tucked the keys in his pocket--the Black Bitch would be safe where she was until morning--and started for the door, Sirius a poorly coordinated dead weight against him.  He could feel the heat of his friend's body in a long line down his side, seeping through robes and shirt--or maybe he was just imagining it.  He wasn't imagining the tickle of Sirius's hair against his cheek, or the solid shapes of his friend's muscles.  Or the smell of alcohol on his breath.

"Les take Bike," Sirius said.  "You drive."

            "I thought you only had one helmet."  _He, drive the Black Bitch?  No one other than Sirius was allowed to so much as touch her handlebars, not since that night James had painted her "initials" in blue on the gas tank.  _

"You can wear it," Sirius offered generously.  "I like riding Bike with you."

"No," Remus said.  "We're going straight home."

Their passage through the pub had not gone unnoticed.  There were a few snickers, and a handful of shouted comments--"Taking him home to his wife, are you?"  and "Yep, that's Britain's finest for you.  No wonder we're losing the war."--but most of the patrons were too absorbed in their own drinks and conversation to do much more than slant an amused, indulgent, or disapproving glance at the two of them.  The door of the Leaky Cauldron swung shut behind them, cutting off the hum of voices and spill of light from within, and they lurched out into the gathering twilight.

As soon as the door had latched shut, Remus scanned the street in search of muggles.   Seeing none, he apparated himself and Sirius away to the street outside their building, the closest he could get them to the flat, which, like all aurors' residences, was warded against apparition.  There were a lot of wards, some of which Sirius had sealed in blood, and most of which only he could pass through without triggering defences or alarms.  Remus, oddly enough, could pass through them all as well.  They hadn't even had to code the wards to allow him entry--they seemed to accept him somehow as part of Sirius.  At the moment, this was most definitely a Good Thing, as Remus highly doubted that his friend was up to disarming the insanely complicated barriers.  The two flights of steps up to their flat were obstacle enough.

By the time the two of them finally made it up the steps and lurched into the flat, Remus had come to a decision.  _This is the last time, he told himself firmly as he kicked a pile of dirty laundry out of the way and steered Sirius over to his bed.  __The last time I drag him home from a bar.  The last time I haul his arse up those bloody steps.  I don't think I can stand this anymore._

He was tired of worrying, tired of waiting up for a flatmate who didn't always come home, sick inside from watching Sirius's apparently determined slide towards self-destruction.  The war was wearing on all of them.  James, running courier messages across England day and night.  Peter, putting in long hours at the Ministry until his round face thinned out and his eyes had circles under them.  Lily, five months pregnant and still working her job at the Department of Mysteries, because they were too desperate and over-worked to spare her.  Desperate enough to hire even werewolves.

But of all of them, Sirius was being hit the hardest, spending day after day inspecting dead bodies and dueling with dark wizards, and night after night drinking, trying, Remus supposed, to forget.  Never imagining that every bruise he sustained, every risk he ran, tore his friend's heart apart another little piece at a time.

Remus stood for a long moment in the half-lit room, staring down at the other wizard, who was now lying, unconscious, across the bed.  He looked oddly vulnerable, hair tangled and long eyelashes laying dark against his pale skin.  With the lines of weariness smoothed away and the haunted, bloodshot eyes closed, he looked once more like the rough-and-tumble boy Remus had gone to Hogwarts with.  Remus wasn't sure whether he wanted to hug him or throttle him.  _I guess I better get his clothes off, he sighed inwardly.  __I really shouldn't let him sleep in his boots and auror's robe._

With the ease of far too much practice he tugged off dragonhide boots and wrestled limp arms out of sleeves, until Sirius was left in only his black muggle jeans.  Remus wasn't about to take _those off.  Much as his fingers itched toward that zipper, he was not going to torture himself like that, or take advantage of Sirius that way.  Sirius had no idea that Remus felt anything more than friendship toward him, and if he'd known, he'd probably have moved out in a heartbeat.  As it was, that insistent, lingering attraction--it was not a crush, unfortunately; crushes eventually went away--was probably the last thread keeping Remus from doing the same.  But tonight, finally, that thread had snapped.  Unwavering loyalty can only last so long in the face of constant emotional pain, even if half of that pain is vicarious._

In the dim light, Sirius's torso was even paler than his face.  He was thinner than he'd been a few months ago, though those lean muscles were as sharply defined as ever.  Remus could see the long blades of his collarbones, the left one with a small lump in the middle where the bone had thickened around an old break from a bludger.  The crescent bite scar on his shoulder stood out vividly, ragged and pink, an ugly, savage thing that never failed to fill Remus with guilt.  Lycanthropy might not be contagious to someone in animagus form, but every scratch and bite the wolf inflicted on Padfoot left its mark.  Sirius, ever loyal, had claimed that the injury hadn't even hurt.  Remus could still see him, sitting in the Shrieking Shack with blood running down his chest, assuring the other three boys that he was fine, that he couldn't even feel it, his pale skin and tight lips making the statement an obvious lie.  A tiny, traitor part of Remus's mind fixated on what that scar would feel like under his lips, on what Sirius's callused, broken-nailed fingers would feel like on his own scars.  He ignored it, blocking out the mental image as he blocked Sirius's body from his view by covering it with a blanket.  Curling fingers that yearned to touch into tight, self-contained fists, Remus left Sirius's room and went to seek his own bed.  He could pack in the morning.

_They die in their houses and they die in the air****__  
__In Scotland and Wales the dead are everywhere****__  
__They die so fast there's no time to prepare****__  
__A decent grave to surround them****__  
__Old world glory, old world fame****__  
__The old world's gone, gone up in flames****__  
__Nothing will ever be the same****__  
__And nothing lasts forever****__  
__Oh I'd pray for him but I've forgotten how****__  
__And there's nothing, nothing that can save him now****__  
__With those haunted eyes and that funny bow_

_And who am I to deny him?****__  
  
_

^_~


	2. Someone to Come Home To

**DISCLAIMER:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The song "1917," excerpts from which appear at the beginning and end of this fic, belongs to David Olney and Emmylou Harris.

Posted by: Elspeth (AKA Elspethdixon)

  
**Author notes:** Warning: The fic has gone beyond "slashy themes" to out and out slash. And there are still references to alcohol. And it's still not in the same continuity as "Scars." It also, just in case anyone's interested, contains the first kiss scene I've ever written. It's so G-rated that it could be at the end of a Disney film, were it not for the parties involved.

**Part II:**** Someone to Come Home To**

_Old world glory, old world fame****__  
__The old world's gone, gone up in flames****__  
__Nothing will ever be the same****__  
__And nothing lasts forever****__  
__Oh I'd pray for him but I've forgotten how****__  
__And there's nothing, nothing that can save him now****__  
__With those haunted eyes and that funny bow_

_And who am I to deny him?_

            But when morning came, Remus found himself putting off the task of gathering his things together.  Sunlight slanted in through the blinds and dawn turned into daylight and still he hadn't so much as pulled a poster down off the wall.  Staying hurt, more so every day, but in the cold light of morning the prospect of leaving seemed more painful still.  

            It was as he stood tentatively contemplating an open dresser drawer that he heard Sirius start to stir in the other bedroom.  If there was any justice in this world, the other wizard would have a headache the size of Hogwarts.  Grabbing a mug of coffee and an aspirin bottle from the kitchen, Remus headed in to say good morning.

"Moony," Sirius blinked groggily at him from beneath the tangled blanket, face still half-buried in his pillow.  "What happened last night?"

            "You mean before, or after I lost my virginity?"  The question, posed in a completely deadpan voice, slipped out before Remus remembered that, as of last night, the time for practical jokes was over.  

            "What!?!"  Sirius sat bolt upright in shock, then groaned and collapsed back onto the bed.

            "Just kidding, just kidding," Remus said quickly.  "Nothing happened; you passed out."

            "You are an evil monster," Sirius forced out between gritted teeth, pressing both hands to his temples.  "And I hate you."

            "That's not what you said last night."  Remus let a smirk linger around his lips, watching Sirius's face turn even greener than it had been previously.  _Ah yes, revenge is sweet.  Perhaps he was slightly more bitter about being forced to deal with Sirius's problems than he'd thought._

            "Oh God, what did I say?"  A look of slowly dawning horror began to replace the expression of pained misery on Sirius's face.

            "Well…" Remus let the pause drag out dramatically.  "You told me that I had beautiful eyes, and that there was a powerful and irresistible attraction between us…"

            "Oh God.  I said that?  I'm really…  M'sorry.  You weren't ever s'possed to find out--I mean, what attraction?"

            "I wasn't supposed to find out what?"  This was not the way Sirius was supposed to react.  There was supposed to be embarrassment and indignation, not frantic defensiveness.

            Sirius's entire face was suddenly suffused with colour, and his eyes darted around the room, looking anywhere but at Remus.  "What I said last night.  Just forget it.  I was drunk; I didn't know what I was sayin'.  I didn't mean it.  Just forget I said anythin'," he babbled.

            "Didn't mean what, exactly?"  Remus set the hot coffee down on the bedside table and crouched down beside the bed.  "Sirius, calm down.  You didn't say anything.  You just talked a lot about the raid site you'd been to."  He looked away, not meeting Sirius's eyes.  "I shouldn't have teased you like that; I'm sorry.  Especially as there's something else we need to talk about."

            Sirius ignored Remus's hint at the need for a serious conversation, focussing solely on the first part of what he'd said.  "I didn't, didn't say anythin' about you?  About us?"

            "What 'Us'?"  Why was Sirius fixating on this?  Remus was now heartily sorry he'd ever made the attempt at a joke.  He just wanted to get this conversation over with and get to work.  He could start packing when he got home.  _No, not home.  The flat wasn't going to be his home anymore.  That was the whole point of leaving.  Once again, he squashed the small, traitorous voice that whispered that home was wherever Sirius was, that home was black fur and blue eyes, and pack brothers running in the moonlight.  He refused to let the wolf do his thinking for him._

            "Ah, exactly.  There is no us.  Just what I meant."  Sirius closed his eyes again.  For a moment, those red-veined blue orbs had looked almost--disappointed?  "My head hurts too much to think.  Remus, do you have to shuffle your feet so loud?"

            "Speaking of the, ah, nonexistent 'us'," Remus began tentatively, his voice gradually growing stronger as he nerved himself up to make the announcement, "I've decided--that is, I think that--oh damn, there's no easy way to say this, is there?  I want to move out."

            "You what?"  Sirius's eyes snapped open, shocked.

            "I want to move out," Remus repeated.  "I don't, I don't think this flatmates thing is working out well."

            "Oh," Sirius said in a small voice.  He sat up carefully, back resting against the bed's headboard.  "I understand," he continued.  "I mean, I work weird hours, and I'm horrible in the morning, and we're both of us terrible slobs without James around to yell at us to clean things up, so the place is a wreck, and, yeah…" his voice trailed off.  "It's probably a good idea," he began again. "I mean, my flat's a bloody great target for Death Eater attacks, and I'm turnin' into an absolute mess, and s'not fair makin' you pick up after me all the time."  He did not look at Remus as he said this, eyes instead focused on his knees.  His left hand had gone to the scar on his shoulder, fingering it absent-mindedly as he spoke, and for a second Remus could again see that fifteen year-old boy in the Shrieking Shack.  _It doesn't hurt, really.  I'm fine.  I don't feel anything._

            Remus drew breath to speak, but Sirius didn't let him, instead, he rushed on, in that same, hopeless-sounding voice.  "It's not really fair to either of us, and it would probably be a good thing if you left.  You have to have guessed, from what you said just now.  I bet I _did say something about it last night.  It was all I could think about, after seeing, seeing that place…  I--oh fuck me, I've probably been obvious as all Hell."_

            "Say something about what?  What's been obvious?"  Remus asked confusedly.  Sirius _wanted him to leave?  He thought it would be a good idea?  This hadn't been at all what Remus was expecting.  But, now that he thought back, it did make a certain amount of sense.  Sirius, except for occasions like last night, had seemed to be going out his way to avoid him lately.  Staying out late, wrapping himself in his job as if it were a protective blanket to keep Remus out, keeping himself apart from the other man even physically.  He never seemed to touch Remus anymore, except for when they wrestled on full moons or rode his bike.  No more casual punches in the arm or hands messing up his hair.  No more snatching cereal boxes or newspapers out of his hands and hitting him with them.  Only aloofness._

            "That I love you, of course.  Lust after you," he corrected himself.  "I tried to ignore it, to act normal and all.  I hoped it would go away, but it didn't.  And sharin' a flat, havin' you around all the time, just the two of us…  And now you've figured it out, and you're leavin'.  Oh, fuck."  He put one hand to his temple again, screwing his fingers into his hair. "I always screw everythin' up.  I must have blurted it out, like, last night.  Those kids looked so much like you, and all I could think about was that you might die too, or I'd die, before I ever told you."

            Remus was frozen, staring at Sirius in shock.  This couldn't be real.  He must have fallen into his own private fantasy, the one where Sirius said "Nevermind that my entire sex life up until this point has consisted of girls whose breast measurements are larger than their IQs, I love you.  I've always loved you." and then kissed him.

"Remus?" Sirius prompted.  "Remus, say somethin'.  Tell me I'm weird and give you the creeps, or whatever.  Don't just sit there gapin' at me."

            "You _love me?  And you never said anything?"_

            "Of _course not.  Wait," Sirius suddenly looked horrified.  "You didn't know?  Then why are you leaving?"_

                Remus's entire worldview did a slow flip-flop.  Sirius wanted him, loved him, lusted after him?  All those nights, when he lay in his damnably cold and empty bed dreaming about Sirius, Sirius had been doing the same about him?  It couldn't be true, was too ridiculous to be true.  It was like something out of a farce, or one of those dreadful romance novels Lily had used to read.

            "Because I can't stand to watch you destroy yourself anymore.  I can't deal with the fall out, the worry, being afraid that you'll get yourself killed before I ever…get…to…say…I..." Remus's voice trailed off into silence.  He couldn't leave _now, not now that he knew that his miserable, half-suppressed longings actually had a hope of becoming reality.  "Because I love you too and it hurts to watch you be miserable and we're both a pair of absolute idiots and how long have you been in love with me and been afraid to say anything?" he blurted out._

            "Since sixth year," Sirius mumbled.  "Don't yell, please.  Wait," he turned bloodshot eyes to Remus, staring at him in amazement.  "You love me too?  But, but, I thought you liked girls."

            "Sirius, name one girl I have ever dated in my entire life, not counting taking Lily to the yule ball in fourth year.  _You're the one who always brought home girlfriends."_

            "Only because I couldn't have you."  He broke off, the irony of the situation suddenly dawning on him as well.  "All I had to do was say somethin'.  We are both idiots."  He shook his head slowly, wincing slightly at the motion.  Feathers of black hair fell forward over his shoulders, and he reached up to shove a handful back behind his ear.  "And now you're leaving, and it's too late."

            "I don't have to leave."  The sentence popped out of Remus's mouth before he could stop himself.  "I haven't even packed yet."

            "Oh."  Sirius picked up the mug of coffee from the bedside table, cradling it carefully in his hands, and gulped down the aspirin.  Eyes carefully avoiding Remus's, he inspected the hot black liquid as if it were a set of tea leaves instead of merely coffee.  His hair was once again hanging in his face.  "Is there any way I could… get you to stay?"

            _Put down that bloody coffee and kiss me.  "Stop drinking.  Stop taking so many stupid risks.  When something's bothering you, __tell me about it."  He pulled the coffee out of Sirius's hands and set it back on the bedside table, then reached out and took Sirius's chin in his hand, tipping his face upward and forcing him to meet his eyes.  "I don't want to lose you.  I couldn't stand to lose you.  And I don't want to have to drag your heavy arse up the stairs anymore, either," he added.  "It may have escaped your notice, but you're substantially bigger than I am."_

            "No," Sirius breathed, reaching up to capture Remus's fingers with his own.  "It hasn't."

            Remus, anticipating Sirius's next move, saved him the trouble of physically dragging him down onto the bed by sitting on the edge of it.  Tentatively, he reached out with his free hand and brushed back Sirius's hair, black strands clinging to his fingers.

            "Well?"

            Sirius tightened his fingers around Remus's, gripping them so hard it hurt.  "I can try.  If you help me, I can bloody well try.  Risks are harder to take, when you have someone to come home to."

            Someone to come home to.  Home sounded good.  Deep inside Remus, something furry sat up and perked up its ears.

            "Promise?"  

Sirius's eyes seemed unnaturally blue, pale and bright like a husky's.  Wide and long-lashed and fixed on Remus with an intensity that was almost frightening.  _Do you want this? those eyes seemed to whisper.  __Are you sure?  "I promise," he said._

And then one of his hands was on Remus's shoulder, and the other one was lacing its way through his hair, and his face was only inches away.  Remus closed his eyes, threaded his own hand more tightly into Sirius's dark tangles, and lowered his lips to Sirius's upturned face.

As first kisses went, it far surpassed that one, awkward one with Lily, all those years ago, or the handful of brief, feverish ones at school parties.  This felt right.  Sirius's lips were hot on his, hot, and yet oddly tentative.  Rough stubble scraped against Remus's face, not exactly painful, but different.  It was an uncertain kiss, lips only, light and far too brief, but it seemed to burn across his mouth like fire.  Tingling in his blood like moonlight, but without the grinding pain that the full moon always brought.

He opened his eyes again to find himself gazing straight into Sirius's arctic irises.  This close, he could see the lattices of grey around the pupils, the darker rings where iris edged into sclera.  He wanted to kiss those eyes, kiss every bit of that face; crooked, bludger-beaten nose, square jaw, high, rough-edged cheekbones, and those long-lashed, bruised-looking eyelids.  Instead, he reluctantly straightened, pulling his face away.  

"Come on," he said, rising to his feet and pulling Sirius with him.  "We've got to get ready for work.  If we spend any longer here, we won't even have time for breakfast."

Sirius grimaced.  "I don't want breakfast, just aspirin and caffeine.  I may never eat again."

Remus turned him around by the shoulders and gave him a gentle push towards the bathroom.  "Go brush your teeth and shave, then."

Sirius obediently went.  After a moment, the tantalizing sound of the shower turning on drifted out through the not-quite-closed bathroom door.  Later, Remus hissed firmly at himself, squashing the mental image of a wet and soapy Sirius.  _Later.  We need to take this slow._

Suddenly, the door creaked open slightly wider, and Sirius poked his head out around it, face still half covered in shaving cream.  There were perfectly good charms that would have accomplished the same thing, but he always insisted on the muggle method of shaving.

"Remus," he asked, looking slightly overwhelmed, "is it true that werewolves mate for life?"

            Remus smiled.  "Only if they want to," he said.

_Hold me 'neath the London skies****__  
__Let's not talk of how or why****__  
__Tomorrow's soon enough to die****__  
__But right now the war is over._

^_~


	3. Starlight and Moonlight

**DISCLAIMER:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The song "1917," excerpts from which appear at the beginning and end of this fic, belongs to David Olney and Emmylou Harris.

Posted by: Elspeth (AKA Elspethdixon).

Author's Notes: Warning: The slash has not disappeared, nor has this become part of "Scars" in the past few weeks.  I have, however, been given fanart, which can be found at   
http://www.mediaminer.org/fanart/view.php?id=97829 .  I love you, Taira!!! 

Evil smirk.  This is the happy chapter, y'all.  The angst will return anon.

Part III:  Starlight and Moonlight 

_(three weeks after the preceding events)_

_Hold me 'neath the London skies_**_   
Let's not talk of how or why   
Tomorrow's soon enough to die   
But right now the war is over._**

The night air was unseasonably chilly for May, and Remus shivered as he stood on the flat's cramped balcony, wishing now that he hadn't decided to leave that muggle-style pullover inside.

"Sirius," he asked, knowing that he probably sounded as if he were whining, but not particularly caring at the moment, "how much longer is this going to take?"

"I've almost found it, really," Sirius replied absently, most of his attention focused on the giant and unwieldy telescope with which he was currently attempting to locate Jupiter.  "Remind me never to go months without usin' this ever again," he added.  "The damn thing's out of alignment.  I'm gonna have to take the entire bleedin' telescope apart later to fix it."

"Couldn't you just use some sort of charm on it?" Remus suggested.  "Like the one you put up to prevent weather damage?"  He was beginning to recall exactly why he'd never signed up for Astronomy class at Hogwarts—all of the labs seemed to take place in the middle of the night, and usually consisted, according to those who'd suffered through them, of spending hours locating whatever the students were supposed to observe only to be driven inside by rain before anyone had gotten more than a few moments' glimpse.

"Moony, you're a genius," Sirius said.  "Ah!  Found it!"  He looked up from the telescope's eyepiece, grinning triumphantly.  "Quick, go and look before it moves."

Remus bent obediently to peer into the tiny eyepiece where, amazingly, the bright star on the horizon, half obliterated by city light pollution, became a rust and cream-striped globe.  "Wow," he exclaimed, excited despite himself.  "It's got stripes.  And a big red splotch.  And hey, what are those little bright things around it?"

"Moons," Sirius informed him, leaning against the balcony rail and lighting a cigarette.  "Probably Io and Ganymede."

"You can tell which Moon is which just with this?"  Remus was highly impressed.

"Actually, no," Sirius admitted.  "Those were just the first two of Jupiter's moons I could think of.  Io's really interestin'; it's got volcanoes."  His eyes shone with enthusiasm as he gestured with one hand towards the small speck of brightness that was Jupiter, despite the fact that he'd only gotten off his shift at auror headquarters a few hours ago.  Three weeks ago, there would have been a drink of some kind in that hand by this time of night.  Tonight, there was none.  Of course, the fact that Remus had thrown out every alcoholic beverage in the flat, down to and including butterbeer, may have helped.  "What else do you want to see?"

"How about Venus?" Remus asked, stepping back from the telescope to allow Sirius access to the eyepiece again.  "It's supposed to be the planet of love, after all."  He felt a smile beginning to spread across his lips.  He'd originally agreed to the late night stargazing session mainly to make Sirius happy, but it was turning out to be far more interesting than he'd anticipated, though the light of the nearly full moon that bathed the balcony was making his skin itch.

Sirius wrinkled his nose at the suggestion and shook his head decisively.  "You don't wanna see Venus.  Trust me on this.  It's real borin'; just a big yellow disk.  And it's a nasty planet anyway.  The surface temperature's somethin' like 400 degrees.  _I _was thinkin'…" he paused, and looked over at Remus with something almost like shyness.  "_I _was thinkin' that we could maybe look at the moon.  That's why I brought you out here tonight.  It's only a night away from full, so this is the most complete view we're gonna get."

_Look at the moon?_  Remus's first impulse was to outright refuse the suggestion.  The very thought of getting any closer to that malevolent white sphere than he absolutely had to filled him with something almost like revulsion.  _I don't want to see it close up; it's ugly enough from a distance._

Sirius obviously saw his distaste at the notion, because he slid a few steps sideways on the narrow balcony to lean an arm around Remus's shoulders.  "We don't have to if you don't want to," he offered diffidently.  "But you really ought to see it.  It's the most beautiful thing in the sky, even better than Jupiter. "

"If you want to look at it, I'll look at it."

Sirius immediately began fiddling with the telescope again, swinging the thing around to point it in the direction of the rising moon.  In the sudden silence, traffic noises drifted up from the street below, slightly muffled by the building's wards.  The balcony, with its piece of tripod-mounted muggle technology, was the flat's greatest security risk, but it was a feature Sirius had insisted on when picking the place out.  "Some things," he'd said at the time, "are worth a bit of extra risk."

"I've got it lined up," Sirius announced after a few moments, looking up from the telescope to grin encouragingly at Remus.  "With this much magnification, you can see practically every crater."

"Brilliant," Remus replied, with as much enthusiasm as he could summon—which wasn't much.  He obediently bent to look through the eyepiece, fiddling with the focusing knob until the grey and white surface came clear.  Bright highlands and dark, crater-pocked plains gleamed empty and lifeless, cold, sterile rock reflecting the sun's light back into space.  _It _looks like a barren desert._  He said as much, but instead of immediately yielding the telescope to Sirius, he continued to stare, compelled by a sort of sick fascination._

"It doesn't," Sirius protested.  "It's clean and perfect.  All white and silver and pure, and out of reach.  Reminds you of all the things you can't have, but want anyway."  A hand descended to Remus's shoulder, warmth seeping in through the fabric of his shirt.  "It's been my favorite thing in the sky since I was twelve.  Well, more like nine.  I spent about two solid years mad for space after the Yanks landed astronauts on it.  Wanted to be an astronaut myself up until I got my Hogwarts letter."

Sirius liked the moon?  Well, it only made sense.  His lover—what a beautiful, beautiful word, so much fun to think—his lover liked everything about the sky, from clouds to comets.  But it was odd to realize that Sirius's perception of the moon was so different from his.  Almost as odd as the mental image of Sirius wearing one of those funny-looking muggle spacesuits.  "Sirius Black: Space Cowboy.  Now _that_ would have been interesting."  _Maybe too interesting.  _Remus didn't even want to think about the sort of stunts Sirius could have pulled with a rocket.  The Black Bitch was trouble enough.  "Too bad Britain doesn't have a space program."

"Yeah, the 'movin' to America' part of the plan was somethin' of a drawback."  Sirius laughed a little.  "I don't think I've ever told anyone about that before.  Wantin' to be an astronaut sounds so, so muggle.  I got enough flack at school for talkin' with a stupid accent and never havin' any money.  I didn't need the sort of shit Lily had to go through."

"You picked on her too."  Remus straightened up, pulling away from the telescope and leaning an elbow on the balcony's rusty iron railing.  He had a much better view that way.  Sirius presented a far better picture than the moon did; the bluish sheen of moonlight on his black hair was ten times more entrancing than the harsh whiteness of solar light reflecting off rock.  He ignored the little voice in the back of his head that whispered that the railing was sure to break and send him tumbling down to the pavement below at any moment.  _It's perfectly sturdy.  Sirius leans on it all the time.  Of course, Sirius, lacking the self-preservation skills most people were born with, didn't have any problems with heights._

"Hey," Sirius protested, "I teased her because she was funny looking and had big ears and collected coins, not because she was muggleborn."  He made a face.  "She deserves all the sympathy she can get in the relative department.  I mean, I thought _my_ sister was bad, but hers…"  He let his voice trail off, leaving the condemnation of Petunia Evans unspoken.

"We're going to have to tell them, you know," Remus said.  "James and Lily.  And Peter, too." 

"Yeah."  Sirius didn't sound very enthusiastic at the idea.  He was no longer smiling, but instead staring down at the cigarette cupped in his hands, not meeting Remus's eyes.  Strands of hair were starting to creep out of his ponytale the way they always did, brushing against his cheeks and forehead.  "I really, really hope they don't freak out on us.  Especially Lily.  I mean, you know how the wizarding world feels about two guys getting' together?  Muggles are ten times worse about it."

"She didn't have any problems with my being a werewolf," Remus reminded him.  

Sirius shook his head.  "I know that, but I've still got this naggin' image of her standin' with the finger of doom pointed at me, announcin' that I'm a weirdo who's unfit to be godfather to her kid."

"Sirius, she tells you that about once a week anyway."

"Well, yeah, but she never means it.  Not really."  Sirius slipped his arm around Remus's shoulders again and leaned the side of his face against the top of Remus's hair.  "You're just the right height, you know that?  I was never able to find girls tall enough for me."

"You're changing the subject," Remus said.  

"Yes," Sirius said.  "I am."  He sighed.  "Well, whatever happens when everyone finds out, at least they can't kick me out of the aurors.  We need people too much.  Anyway, I don't think Captain Moody cares if you sleep with men, women, livestock, or inanimate objects, so long as you stay alert, do your job well, and perform regular sweeps of the squad room to search for surveillance spells.  I can just imagine the rest of the squad's reactions, though. The men's locker room will be so much fun.  McKinnon will refuse to change in front of me, and Frank Longbottom will start doing stripteases in an attempt to make me blush."

Remus started laughing uncontrollably at the mental image of Frank Longbottom, commonly agreed to have the largest sideburns and hairiest chest in the wizarding world, performing a striptease.  It was strangely compelling.  Like a train wreck.  "Denise would hear about it and kill you," he gasped, when the laughing fit had subsided.  "_And him.  And then sue your family for the money she'd need to bring up her now half-orphaned son.  That woman is the most hard-nosed Hufflepuff I've ever met.  And you're still changing the subject, only this time in a more subtle fashion."_

Sirius sighed, his breath stirring Remus's hair.  "Yeah, Moony, I know we're gonna have to tell them.  I just can't decide whether we ought to break it to them gently, or just start snoggin' in front of them.  I mean, I didn't even tell _you_ that I was in love with you for ages because I was afraid you'd freak out and never want to be friends with me again.  And we did share a room with Peter and James for seven years.  And I used to change in front of Prongs after quidditch practice.  He's going to hit the roof."

"You don't mean that you were checking him out back then?" Remus asked.  He felt a momentary flare of jealousy.  He'd have given just about anything for the opportunity to ogle Sirius after quidditch practice.

"Eeew!  _James_?" Sirius's voice was filled with deep disgust.  "We're practically related.  It'd be like lustin' after one of my sisters!"

"Good.  I don't have to track him down tomorrow night and have venison dinner."

"He'd be stringy anyway, skinny as he is," Sirius said.  He sighed again.  "We can tell them this weekend, when we go over to James and Lily's and cage dinner off of them.  Hopefully, it won't be the last dinner we eat there."  He started to raise the cigarette in his free hand toward his lips, then realized that his mouth was about three inches away from Remus's hair and halted the motion, resting his hand on the balcony rail beside the other man's. 

"Well," Remus ventured, "it won't be the first surprise we've sprung on them.  If they could handle my being a werewolf, and your, well… what you did sixth year," Remus and the others never mentioned the Shrieking Shack incident among themselves, or to anyone else—there was still too much unresolved guilt and hurt floating around the topic, "they ought to be able to handle this."  _I hope._

"Sixth year."  The fingers of Sirius's right hand tightened on Remus's shoulder.  "I don't know why you put up with me.  I'm half Cockney and half Scottish, half muggle and half wizard, half dog and half human, half straight and half gay, half an alcoholic… for once, I'd just like to be something _whole_."

"I'm a whole werewolf.  I win."  Remus fiddled with a piece of black paint that was peeling off the iron railing, picking it off to reveal the rust underneath.  "Anyway, you're wholly mine."  _Oh God, that sounds sappy_.  "And wholly an auror," he added pulling away from Sirius slightly to lean against the balcony rail, where he could look up at the other wizard.  From this close, he could see the dark stubble on Sirius's cheeks, and every detail of those long, dark lashes.  "And wholly an idiot, sometimes."  He could feel himself smiling, remembering some of those times.  "This telescope is pretty muggle, though.  I don't think wizards have used mirrors for this sort of thing for years."

"My Dad gave it to me when I got a NEWT in astronomy."  Sirius grinned, patting the thing with almost the same sort of fondness he displayed towards the Black Bitch.  His fingers brushed along the long, black tube with surprising gentleness.  "I think he had secret hopes that I'd become an astronomer after I got out of school, instead of an auror."

"You couldn't stay still long enough to have a nice, desk-job sort of academic career," Remus said.  It was true.  Sirius had been one of the most endearingly twitchy students he'd ever had to sit next to.  "I'm surprised you like astronomy so much, considering the amount of waiting and standing still that goes into it."

"I like the stars," Sirius answered simply.  "Stars are distant, clean, remote.  There's no emotion there, no pain.  Even Venus, nasty little Hell-world that it is, looks calm through a telescope."  He tilted his head to the side slightly, blue eyes gazing past Remus, up at the sky above them with its faintly glittering lights.  "I bet that's what the Earth looks like from space.  All blue and green and swirlin' clouds, and no sign that underneath those clouds people are hurtin' and killin' each other.  You can forget, lookin' at the stars."  He grinned suddenly, half-ruefully.  "Escapism is what I do best, after all."

Sirius was not going to go all self pitying and depressed tonight.  Remus wasn't going to let him.  The moonlight tingling in his blood was suggesting various ways to distract him, many of them involving teeth and fur.  Usually, Remus tried to ignore any and all "canine" instincts, but this time his furry side was starting to sound pretty persuasive.

"Hey, if you're done with the telescope, I want to take a look at it again," Sirius announced suddenly.  "I didn't bring you out here to listen me babble, I brought you out to show off my incredible knowledge of astronomy and giant, phallic-lookin' telescope.  The moon's prob'ly moved too far to still be in the field of view, so I'm gonna have to re-adjust it.  You want to check out Canis Major instead?  Or the Orion Nebula?"

Remus turned around, tipped his face upward, and kissed Sirius on the side of the jaw, lips sliding along his face toward his mouth.

"Or we could not look at them," Sirius muttered, hand coming up to wrap around the back of Remus's neck.  The cigarette went spinning over the balcony rail, falling into the street below like a miniature comet.  "Not lookin' is good too."

"Looking at Canis Major sounds good to me.  In fact, I don't want to look at anything else for the rest of the night."  Remus wrapped his arms around Sirius, sliding one hand up under his shirt, against the skin of his back.  It was warm under his hands, a welcome antidote to the chill of the night air.

Sirius took a step backward, away from the railing, his mouth sealing against Remus's.  Teeth bit down on Remus's lower lip, and fingers began lacing themselves into his hair, pulling with a grip that was almost painful.  Remus leaned forward, closing his eyes, losing himself in the taste and scent of his mate.  

Sirius leaned back and nearly fell into something that scraped across the cement of the balcony's floor.  The telescope tripod.

"The telescope, Remus," he moaned, disentangling one hand and reaching behind him to support himself against the brick of the flat's outside wall.  "Remember the telescope.  It cost a bloody fortune."  

There was a pause.  

"Oh God!  Forget the telescope, do that again!"

^_~

(_the morning after the following night)_

Remus groaned.  He hurt.  He hurt all over: muscles, bones, head.  Everything ached, as if someone had been stretching him on the rack, and the memory of the previous night was hazy in his mind.  _I hate full moons._

Something cold was pressing into his face.  It took him a moment to realize that that something was Padfoot's nose.  One black paw was firmly planted across Remus's chest, and his head was resting against a furry ribcage.  A moment or so later, a warm tongue began licking him.

"Stop it," he moaned.  "M'not a wounded puppy."

The licking turned into a pair of lips against his forehead, and a pair of arms were suddenly around him.  "Oh good, you're awake."

"I hate full moons," Remus moaned, while he tried to summon up the energy needed to move.  "I really hate them.  You have no idea."  _No, scratch moving.  Staying put was fast beginning to seem like a very good idea, especially since one of Sirius's hands had begun stroking his hair._

"No, I have absolutely no idea what it's like to wake up sick, with a splitting headache and a hazy memory of the previous night."  Sirius's voice was gentle and amused, but with an underlying note of concern.  "But I made a wild guess and got the aspirin ready.  And I put tea on.  It'll be ready in a few minutes."

"I love you."  Remus reached up and cupped a hand against Sirius's face, staring up into tired-looking eyes smudged with dark circles.  Neither of them got much sleep on these nights.  Sirius leaned into the touch, eyes drifting half closed.  He was always unusually fond of physical contact the night after full moons, as if bits of Padfoot's personality carried over into his human form.

"Yeah," Sirius's lips curved into a smile.  "I know.  Me too."  He shifted his weight, arms wrapping around Remus more tightly.  "Do you think you can stand up?  The floor's not real comfortable."

"I'm fine, really."  Remus began struggling to his feet, though whether his eventually success was do to his own efforts or to Sirius's aid, even he wasn't totally sure.  "I'm just tired."  Sirius, he noticed, as the pair of them moved the few steps toward the bed—Sirius's bed, actually, as they seemed to have somehow ended up in his room—was still mostly clothed.  It struck Remus as distinctly unfair that animagi could transform without disrobing.  The practice of removing all of one's clothing before a transforming into a werewolf, though necessary if one ever wanted to wear said clothing again, had caused him a considerable amount of embarrassment back in their school days.  The first time Sirius had seen him naked, he'd announced out in shock that Remus's right arm looked if something had been chewing on it—at which point Peter had elbowed him in the ribs and hissed viciously that something probably had and he should keep his clever comments to himself.

"At least we don't need the first aid kit this time," Sirius said, as he half-lowered Remus onto the bed.  "We were too busy trashin' the flat to bite each other much."  

Remus realized then that the mess in the room far exceeded it's usually untidiness. Clothes, usually gathered in a single pile in the corner, were strewn everywhere, and one flannel shirt looked distinctly chewed on, as if it had been used in a vigorous game of tug-of-war.  The bedside table was knocked over—the lamp miraculously unbroken—and the assortment of motorcycle magazines and auror training manuals usually stacked on it had spilled out across the floor.  He let out a low whistle.

"Yeah," Sirius agreed.  "Good thing we've got decent silencin' spells built into the walls and floor, or God alone knows what the neighbors would be thinkin'."

"What did we _do?"  Remus wasn't sure whether to be horrified or amused, though Sirius definitely seemed to have come down in favour of amusment._

"Well, first I chased you, and then you chased me, and then we got into a fight over my flannel shirt, which you decided to chew on, and then I chased you some more, and you let me catch you and I pretended like I was gonna bite your throat out…" Sirius let his voice trail off.  "It was fun.  Really.  I'd say we should do this more often, but it sort of makes me feel evil.  I mean, since my transformations don't hurt like yours do."  He knelt down beside the bed, picking up the bedside table and righting it.  He replaced the lamp, but left the magazines where they were.  "I'll pick it up, don't worry.  Well, the worst of it, at least."  He looked up at Remus, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, gaze slanting up through his eyelashes.  "You want me to go get that tea now?"

"Yes, _please," Remus said fervently.  He could smell the tantalizing scent of Earl Grey drifting in from the kitchen, a siren song promising hot, caffeinated comfort.  "And clothes, too."  _

Sirius, halfway to the door, bent and scooped the flannel shirt up off the floor, tossing it underhand at him.  "Here.  You seemed to like this one last night."

"Oh, thank you, generous one," Remus muttered, but he put the shirt on anyway, hiding his scars from view and enveloping himself in the scent of Sirius, which permeated the soft, worn flannel.

Moments later, Sirius returned, a steaming mug in one hand and a pair of white tablets in the other.  The scene was a near duplicate of the one three weeks ago, Remus mused to himself as he accepted the mug of tea.  One of them in bed, and the other bearing aspirin and a hot drink.  It was an old routine by now, perfected through months worth of bad shifts and drinking bouts and full moons.  Still, there was something nagging at the back of his mind.

"Don't you have to go to work soon?" he asked, before swallowing the first of the painkillers.

"Nope."  Sirius grinned, his eyes sparkling like moonlight on water, gleaming that way that they always had back at Hogwarts when knew he'd gotten away with something.  "I called in and told Frank Longbottom that I was sick.  He thinks I'm in bed nursing a hangover.  Nobody expects me in until noon.  I'm yours to wait on you hand, foot, and paw.  Want me to go fetch the paper?"

_Let us run beneath the moon**  
**__Forget the times are out of tune**  
**__The morning always comes too soon__  
But right now the war is over_

^_~

Thank you to everyone who reviewed the first two chapters of  "Gravity."

SH and Anonymous: Thanks!  I'm glad you liked my first two chapters.

Lady Jaida:  Thanks!  I'm delighted that my characters' interactions came across as realistic to you.  * squeals in a fangirlish manner *  You're the one who wrote "The Real Folk Blues," aren't you?  It's the best Sirius-in-Azkaban piece I've ever seen.  Everyone, go read "The Real Folk Blues."

Alla:  Thanks!  I'm glad you like my story, even if it isn't your usually shipping preference.  About "ATB," well, I fully intended to kill Remus off, since I have strong suspicions that that might happen in canon, but I just couldn't do it.  I love him too much.

Kats, Lunard, and Hopeful:  Thanks!  Don't worry, that wasn't the end.  There will eventually be at least five chapters. This is the last happy one, though.

Kit Cloudkicker:  Thanks!  Shhh, don't give the plot away.  The nervous breakdown is chapter five, after Halloween.


	4. Blood and Alcohol

**DISCLAIMER:** This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The song "1917," excerpts from which appear at the beginning and end of this fic, belongs to David Olney and Emmylou Harris. The full lyrics can be found at http://www.westfront.de/emmylou_1917.htm.  
**Author notes:** Warning: Still slash, still not part of "Scars." And in this chapter, the angst resumes. With a bang. Thanks to dedicated French Homework Avoidance, this chapter is out earlier than expected (the homework was eventually completed as well, thanks to a technique known as Skipping Cross-Country Practice).  
  
Thank you to the Wolfstar and For-get-me-not threads, especially Taira, since the cute little sheriff's badge from her fanart inspired Sirius's Star Trek-like auror badge/pager, and to Cedar, whose cookie "Iscariot" provided the code name for the Ministry mole.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Part IV: Blood and Alcohol

_Let us run beneath the moon**  
**__Forget the times are out of tune**  
**__The morning always comes too soon__  
But right now the war is over_

Remus jerked awake, sensitive ears catching the heart-stopping sound of Sirius's enchanted auror badge buzzing.  The golden sunburst pin, lying discarded against the top of the bedside table, was gleaming like a fallen star in the darkened room, vibrating at a nerve-wrackingly high pitch.  It was a sound that all aurors and their friends and families had come to know and hate over the past few months, as the war intensified; the sound of a summons.  Invariable, it meant danger, bloodshed, hexmarks, and late-night interrogations.  Remus wasn't sure which were worse—the times when Sirius returned from such a summons with hexmarks and bruises stamped the length of his body, or the times he came home with blood on his knuckles and frustration in his eyes.  The aurors were finding their own ways around the Death Eaters' new potions-induced resistance to veritaserum.

"Oh bloody _fuck," a voice muttered into his shoulder.  'I just got off shift five hours ago."  Sirius pulled himself into a sitting position, rubbing at eyes bloodshot from fatigue.  "Can't the bastards even let me get a night's sleep?"_

Remus was already getting out of bed, scooping the clothes Sirius had stripped off a few hours ago off of the floor and tossing them to him.  Keeping up a constant litany of complaints, his mate began pulling on the jeans and muggle style shirt, looping the leather belt with its holstered dogwood and dragon heartstring wand about his waist.  

"It must be bad, for them to call you back in so soon," Remus ventured, searching the floor for his own robes.  There was no point in going back to bed with Sirius out on call—he'd never get a moment's sleep until he returned safely home.

"Yeah."  Sirius sat down on the edge of the bed, tugging on socks and lacing up sneakers.  Despite years of attempts by James to convince him otherwise, he still steadfastly maintained that muggle shoes were better than wizarding ones.  "More traction on the souls," he said.  The white lettering on his shirt seemed to glow against the black fabric in the half-light: Triumph.  Remus hoped it would not turn out to be some sort of ironic foreshadowing.

"Prob'ly another attack."  Sirius sighed, shrugging into his golden auror's robes, already crumpled from a day's wear.  "I wonder who it is this time."  There was a world of anxiety beneath the weary question, nagging whispers that pulled at everyone's mind these days.  _Is it Polaris?  Vesta? The Longbottoms?  The McKinnons? The Ministry offices?  Lily and James?  Every day it seemed another courier or analyst was found dead.  Even accountants like Peter were in danger, and half the time the aurors arrived too late to do anything more than clean up the bodies.  Remus found himself half hoping that this would be one of those times, horrible as the thought was.  __At least that way Sirius won't have to face down the business end of a wand._

"I'm going into work," he announced, as he snapped the collar tabs closed on his robes.  "If it's really serious, they might need me."

Sirius nodded, reaching out to lay his right hand on Remus's shoulder.  The left, unbeknownst to him, was obsessively caressing the hilt of his wand.  "Don't wait up for me, Moony.  I have absolutely no idea how long this is going to take."

Remus pulled Sirius into a hug, wrapping his arms around him as hard as he could.  "Be careful," he breathed, not wanting to let go, wanting to hold Sirius back in the safety and warmth of the flat for another handful of moments.  "Consider that an order from your pack leader."

"Yeah, yeah, I'll be careful," Sirius said.  But he didn't let go right away.  It was at least another half minute before he finally pulled himself free and made his way down the stairs and out of the building, apparating away as soon as he left the wards.

^_~

The Ministry building where Remus worked, normally silent and dark this late at night, was unusually crowded.  When Remus apparated into the street outside the front entrance, he could see yellow light gleaming from a scattering of windows, reflecting golden in the puddles that had formed between the paving stones.  Inside, the halls and cubicles lacked the eerie, ghostly air of desertion that usually characterized office buildings at night, wizard or muggle.  They were filled instead with an even more unnerving feeling of tension.

Remus reached his desk to find Lily waiting for him.  She was chewing on the end of a piece of long, red hair, a sheaf of papers in her hand and a sleeping Harry in a bassinet beside her.  She looked up at the sound of his footsteps, gesturing to the sleeping Harry and holding a finger to her lips.

"I thought you'd be coming in," she said softly, voice humming with suppressed tension.  "Algie Longbottom said his brother's squad had been sent out.  James was called out too, and Andrew Diggory. They've got _two couriers out tonight.  Two couriers and an entire squad of aurors."  Worried green eyes met his.  "Who's the target?"_

Remus shook his head.  "I don't know.  But I couldn't just sit around and wait at home."

Lily nodded agreement, gesturing at the papers she was holding.  "Sit down and help me sort these intelligence reports.  A good half of them are useless junk, and I think about half the rest were planted by the Dark side, but at least it's something useful to do."

Remus pulled a chair over from another cubicle and sat down across the desk from Lily, leafing through the stack of parchment.  But even as half his mind scanned the writing, analyzing data and checking it against the facts they already knew—yet another whisper of leaks within the ministry—the rest of him was occupied worrying over Sirius.  And James, zooming across England on a broomstick to God knew where, carrying messages and communiqués to delicate to be trusted to the floo networks.  The Iris, the Ministry's courier network, often ran messages from Headquarters to aurors in the field.

"Still here, Potter?"  A hearty voice enquired.  Algernon Longbottom's broad, ruddy face poked around the corner of the cubicle, to be followed shortly by the rest of him, a mug of steaming tea in each big hand.  "For Merlin's sake, girl.  I've told you, you don't need to wait around here.  At least take some tea."  He thrust one of the mugs toward her, pressing the other into Remus's hands.  "Good of you to keep her company, Lupin." 

He smiled broadly, noticing the sleeping Harry.  "Cute little tyke." One stubby finger brushed a fringe of black hair off the toddler's forehead.  "Much smaller than Frank's boy."  Harry wrinkled his tiny nose, sighing in his sleep.

"He's started talking now," Lily volunteered, smiling tenderly down at her son.  "He can say four words now.  Mama, Dada, up, and bottle."

"And Padfoot," Remus added.  "I heard hours worth of raptures about that one."

"Actually," Lily corrected, "he said 'Puh.' And he was pointing at his stuffed Winnie-the-Pooh bear when he said it.  But it made Sirius happy to think Harry was saying his name."  She smiled again.  "I suppose we'd better add 'Pooh' to his vocabulary list."

Algie chuckled.  'That boy ought to find a good woman and have himself some sons of his own, so he can stop adopting yours."

Lily sputtered, choking on her tea.  "Ah, I don't think he plans on having children," she managed after a moment.  Her cheeks had gone faintly pink.  She was still a little uncomfortable with Sirius and Remus's relationship, though she was trying hard to come to terms with it.  James had greeted the news with a delighted laugh and an announcement that it was about time, given the way the two of them had been looking at each other for the past three years.  Sirius had responded instantly with a demand as to why, if James had know that the two of them had liked each other for so bleedin' long, he hadn't taken it on himself to bloody well _tell_ one of them, to which James had responded cheerfully that it was none of his business.  Lily, after a brief period of confusion followed by an even briefer period of uncomfortable awkwardness, had eventually decided that it was cute.  Kissing in her presence, however, was still a surefire way to make her blush.  If the two of them kept it up long enough, both Peter and Lily would start twitching and have to leave the room.

"Sirius isn't the, er, marrying type," she added.

Luckily, Algernon Longbottom was not a man for noticing subtleties.  "Likes the bachelor life, eh?  Well, he'll settle down soon enough, once he meets the right girl."  He gave Remus a hearty clap on the back, nearly unbalancing him.  "You could use a nice girl yourself, Lupin.  Get you out and about, get rid of those circles under your eyes."  He turned back to Lily.  "Don't worry yourself, Potter, girl.  This little one's father should be fine.  The Iris always manage to pull through somehow.  It's their job.  Got to get the messages through.  I'll tell the two of you as soon as I get any word about what's going on.  I've heard it may be the McKinnon's' house."  He sobered slightly, pulling a face.  "Let's hope they were out for the evening when the buggers hit."

Lily shuddered.  "From your lips to God's ears.  I don't want to file another casualty report tomorrow."

"Can't blame you for that, Potter, girl, can't blame you for that."  Algie nodded at Remus.  "Keep up the good work, Lupin, Potter.  I'll be 'round as soon as I get some news."  He left the cubicle, his departure seeming to leave an empty space in the air behind him.  One never really realized just how much_ space _Algie took up, both physical and psychological, until he was gone.

Remus turned to Lily, raising his eyebrows.  "Isn't the marrying type?" he asked, suppressing a smile.  

Lily shrugged.  "I thought it was a bit more subtle than 'My son's godfather flies both sides of the quidditch pitch.'"

Remus shook his head.  "He'd probably just ask if that wasn't rather hard on his broom."  _Wait, that didn't sound right._  "I mean, he'd just ask what position he played." _Even worse._ "I mean, never mind."

"Er, yeah," Lily managed.  Her cheeks looked a bit pink.  She tapped a fingertip against Remus's pile of reports.  "Anything interesting?"

"Well, there's this one here."  Remus slid the parchment over to Lily, accepting the change of subject.  "It's an interrogation transcript.  The subject makes several references to a source he calls "Iscariot."  He shook his head.  "They couldn't get much out of him, but it sounds like this "Iscariot" might be some sort of mole within the Ministry."

Lily whistled, eyebrows going up.  "Shit.  That's all we need."  She picked up the report and began scanning it.  "Never tell Sirius I said this," she murmured after a few moments, "but his sister puts me in mind of the Spanish Inquisition.  They could have used her, back in the seventeenth century."

A quarter of an hour later, they had red flagged the unnerving transcript, and had begun a search of the other transcripts in the files, accio-ing several of the older ones from the records room.  No further references to "Iscariot" had turned up, but there were several mentions of some sort of inside source.  Some of the reports from their own spies looked very interesting, especially a collection of Top Secret ones sent in by Dumbledore, which looked as if they might actually have come from inside the Death Eaters' inner circle.  Remus would have to remember to read them over later, some time when the words didn't blur before his eyes and his mind didn't keep racing off to contemplate all of the gruesome things that could be happening to Sirius.

He had just laid one of the rolls of parchment down on his desk, giving up the attempt to concentrate for the moment, when Algie came pelting up, out of breath and wheezing.

"Your young man's on the floo network, Potter.  Has news about the attack."

Lily and Remus were out of their chairs in a second, rushing over to the cast iron wood stove in the corner of the office space.  It looked bizarrely out of place in what was otherwise a modern office building, but some sort of communication equipment was necessary, and it posed less of a fire hazard than an open fireplace would have.  The flames burning inside were casting flickering green patterns over the semi-circle of floor space that surrounded it, their colour a sure sign that it was in use.

"James?" Lily dropped down to her knees by the stove, putting her face close to the grating in front.  "Are you alright?  What's going on?"

"It's bad, Lily, really bad."  James's usually cheerful voice was tight and strained.  "Death Eaters attacked the McKinnons' house.  Both McKinnons are dead, and they've got two other aurors down as well."

"Which two?" Remus whispered, a spear of ice suddenly lancing through his gut.

"I don't know," James admitted.  There was a pause, and Remus, Lily, and Algie could hear him yelling something indistinct at someone else in the room with him.  There was a murmur of background noise.  Andrew Diggory's voice suddenly came through loud and clear.  "All they said was 'Longbottom and Black.'  And no, Potter, I don't know which Black.  They didn't say whether it was Sergeant Black or Auror Black.  Didn't say which Longbottom it was either.  And what are you doing hanging out by the floo port anyway?  I thought I told you to go roust out the second squad.  The first squad's getting slaughtered."  The sound cut off, the flames reverting to their usual orange and gold.

Remus stood motionless, feeling numb.  The air in the room had become thick and hard to breath.  _Longbottom and Black._  The words seemed to echo in his ears.  _Black._  His knees felt weak.

Algie let out a long, shuddering breath.  "That's it then," he said.  "I always knew Frank or Denise would get hurt some day.  Auroring's no job for parents, I told them.  Women oughtent to be running around chasing after Dark wizards, I said.  _Why_ didn't Frank take that staff promotion they offered him?"

"Remus," Lily said, giving his shoulder a little shake.  "Remus, breathe."  It occurred to him suddenly that she had been talking to him for a good half minute.  "It might not be Sirius.  Maybe it's Polaris.  Maybe it's only a stunning spell."

Remus seized onto the notion like a drowning man clutching a plank.  _Love, he realized, __makes you selfish.  The last thing in the world that he would ever dream of was to wish Sirius's sister ill, but he found himself praying with all his heart and soul that that downed auror was Polaris.  Let it be her that was injured, her that fell before a Death Eater's curse.  __Just please, God, don't let it be Sirius._

He was never sure how long the three of them stood there, staring at the stove as if willing the floo port to reactivate.  It could have been mere minutes, it could have been hours.  Lily's face was white in the firelight, her hair gleaming around it like a halo of flame.  Algie was silent, all attempts at hearty encouragement spent.

When the flames became green again, the transition was jarring.

"Moony?"  The voice broke suddenly over the floo network, issuing out of the stove grating as if from the bottom of a well.  "Are you there?  Only you're not at home, and I need to talk to you…"

"Sirius!"  Remus was instantly down on his knees before the stove, reaching for the door.  His fingers halted inches away from the grate as he belatedly recalled that the office floo port was set on voice only, no entry, and had been ever since the last attempt at a break in.  "Sirius, are you okay?"

"Y-yeah, fine," Sirius responded, sounding anything but.  "Just come and get me.  Come and get me, please.  I need to go home, and I can't, I can't… look, just come, alright?"

Remus didn't hesitate.  Shoving the sheaf of half-forgotten parchments into Lily's hands, he was out the office door and racing down the corridor in moments.  His feet thudded into the sound deadening carpet of the hallway and then clattered on the marble of the entrance hall.  The hit wizard on duty at the front door barely twitched an eyebrow as he went by.  People rushing frantically in or out of ministry buildings were a common sight nowadays.

The Aurors' Headquarter building was several blocks away as the broomstick flew, but only a short hop for a wizard with an apparating license.  It was alive with lights and noise and groups of people either milling around aimlessly or rushing back and forth with grim, determined purpose.  Most disquieting of all was the team of mediwizards loading several body bags into a Ministry Ambulance.  Two more healers were helping a groaning and semi-conscious Frank Longbottom into another vehicle, his face white and lined with pain and his thigh soaked in blood.

_Oh shit.  Remus stared in horror at the gruesome scene, frozen in place for a moment, until a hand grabbed his arm._

"Lupin," a harsh voice barked in his ear.  He swiveled around, startled, to find himself looking straight into the scarred and battered face of Captain Moody, his blue glass eye darting around the courtyard wildly and the smaller, hazel one tight with concern.  "Come inside, man.  Don't stand waiting out here like a target."

Remus let Moody steer him toward the Headquarter building's great iron-bound oak doors, built to withstand the worst a magical siege could throw at them.  "What happened?" he gasped out finally.  "We heard there were aurors down?"

"Lieutenant Longbottom and Sergeant Black," Moody said flatly.  "The McKinnons are both dead."

"Was, was that them, in those body bags?"

"And a few others, lad, and a few others."  Moody's face was unreadable—its usual state, thanks to the frightening network of scar tissue that seamed it.  "Your young Black is a bloody berserker in a fight."

"My…" Remus's voice trailed off.  

"I may have only the one eye, lad, but I'm not blind."  A firm grip on his shoulder halted him in front of the door to the main squadroom.  "Go in and pry McGonagall's hip flask out of his hands.  Get him home, and back here again by tomorrow.  Well, later today.  I don't care how you do it.  We're short-handed by at least three men now, possibly four.  I need him."

But Remus had stopped paying attention to Moody's grating voice the moment the squadroom door had come into view.  Stomach hollow, he pushed it open and stepped in.

Sirius was sitting on the edge of the duty desk, clutching a silver flask in a white knuckled grip.  Vesta McGonagall stood beside him, her usually sleek hair in disarray and her eye make-up running in violet streaks down her face, making her look like a red-headed raccoon.  Both of them were covered in blood.

"Moony!"  Sirius was across the room in a single bound, arms suddenly clasping Remus in a hug so tight that it hurt.  He buried his face in Remus's hair.  The smell of blood and ozone seemed to cloud the air around him, and Remus could feel him shaking.  Fine, uncontrollable tremors that rippled through his muscles, as if he were very, very cold.  "Reg an' Sally are dead," he whispered.  "Dead.  We didn' get there in time.  An', an' Pols is 'urt, an' Frank's prob'ly gonna need a cane for the rest of 'is life, an' _I killed one of them_."

"Padfoot, where are you hurt?" Remus tried to pull back from Sirius's embrace to check the other man's body for injuries.  _All that blood… It had to be coming from somewhere._

"M'not," Sirius mumbled.  "M'fine.  Everyone _else is 'urt."_

"It's not his blood," Vesta announced.  She hadn't moved from her place by the duty desk.  "It's from some Death Eater.  I've never seen anyone open up somebody's carotid artery with a cutting curse before.  Slit it open from left to right, blood everywhere. Most incredible aim I've ever seen."  Her voice was flat, oddly monotone.

"I didn' mean to," Sirius half-sobbed.  "I was jus' so angry, seein' what they'd done to Frank an' Pols, an' with the McKinnons lyin' there dead like that…"  He shuddered, arms closing even tighter around Remus, until the silver flask in his left hand pressed into Remus's back, the metal stinging him with cold even through his robes.

"Padfoot…" Remus didn't know what to say.  What _could he say?  What could anyone say?  He was acutely conscious of Vesta's eyes watching the two of them from across the room._

"Oh, bugger."  Sirius pulled back slightly, loosening his hold on Remus to gaze at Vesta's silver hip flask, as if slightly surprised to find it still in his hand.  "I'm burnin' you, aren't I?  S-sorry."  He dropped the thing onto the floor, oblivious to Vesta's indignant mutter.  "I only 'ad a few pulls, I swear.  I don' know what's wrong with me."

"I think you're in shock."  Remus reached up to catch Sirius's chin in one hand, gazing intently into his eyes to gauge to size of the pupils.  They were definitely dilated, but whether that was due psychogenic shock or simply to whatever was in Vesta's hip flask, he couldn't be sure.

'Oh, for God's sake, Black," Vesta's voice cut across their conversation—if you could call it that, disjointed as it was—like a knife.  "Why don't you and your boyfriend just go ahead and make out in the middle of the squadroom already?'

Sirius jerked back from Remus as if he'd been hit, face going even paler.  Vesta was instantly contrite.  "Nevermind," she muttered.  "Just ignore me, I'm worried about Frank and Pub, that's all."  She crossed the carpet to scoop her hip flask up off the floor, lifting it to her mouth and throwing her head back in a long swallow.  

"Does everyone in the aurors know about us?" Remus asked, in spite of himself.  

"Only Captain Moody," Sirius said.  He raised one hand to run his fingers through his hair, loose from usual ponytail and hanging in blood-stiffened elflocks around his face.  "I 'ad  'im put you down as my next of kin.  I don' know 'ow she knows."

Vesta sighed.  "Well, judging by the bite marks on your neck, you were either dating a werewolf or involved with a vampire.  And while there are several dark creatures working for our side, only one lives with you.  And nobody hugs someone like that unless they're in love."  

"Don', don' tell Pols, please," Sirius whispered.  "She… she... Oh, Christ, it might not even matter.  She might be dyin', for all I know."

"Black…" Vesta shook her head.  "Don't jump to conclusions.  Wait 'til Potter or Wet Blanket Andy gets here with the medical reports."

As if her words had conjured him up, the squadroom door suddenly creaked open, revealing a wet and flushed James Potter, one hand still clutching his Nimbus 900.  His glasses were half fogged-over from the transition from outdoors to the warmer squadroom, and behind them, his brown eyes were wide and shocked.

"Sweet Merlin!  Sirius!  Are you okay?"

"I… Jim…"  Sirius shook his head slowly, looking very close to crying.  "It's not my blood."

James looked awed, staring at Sirius as if he'd never seen him before.  "Then whose… no, don't tell me.  I don't think I want to know."  He shook his head sharply.  "I'm supposed to tell you that Polaris and Frank are going to be fine."

Vesta sagged with relief, suddenly looking several years younger as previously unnoticed lines seemed to fade from her face.  Sirius latched onto Remus's arm in a near-death grip, as if needing support to keep his footing.

"Polaris has a slight concussion—they're keeping her overnight for observation.  Frank's got a broken femur, but they're going to pull the bone fragments out and give him Skelo-Gro.  There's going to be some scarring, but…" James's voice trailed off as he realized that no one was listening to him any longer.  "Padfoot, are you sure you're okay?  Maybe you ought to go home and, er, get cleaned off."

"Yeah, home'd be good."  Sirius allowed Remus to lead him towards the doorway.  James stepped aside to let them pass, laying one hand on Sirius's shoulder for a moment.  His eyes found Remus's, and he apparently trusted what he saw there, because he nodded slightly and held the door open for the two of them as they left the room.

"You apparate us, Moony," Sirius said, voice weighted with exhaustion.  "I don' think I oughta try, the way my hands are shakin'."

Remus obeyed, feeling Sirius's arm wrap around his waist in mid-transit, his knees apparently giving out as the world dipped and distorted around them.  Remus practically had to drag him up the stairs to the flat.  Once they were inside, he pulled Sirius into the bathroom, ignoring the wet, muddy footprint the two of them tracked across the carpet.  

Sirius leaned against the edge of the sink as Remus turned the shower on, nearly ripping his robe open in his haste to get it off.  He balled the blood-saturated fabric up and flung it into a corner of the room.  Beneath it, his jeans and t-shirt were equally soaked, sticking to his body as they dried a disgusting red-brown colour.  _He must have been standing right next to that Death Eater, right in the middle of the arterial spray. Remus suppressed a shudder._

Jeans and t-shirt followed robe, until Sirius stood naked on the tiles.  Some of that blood _had been his.  There was a long, thin cut across his ribs, bleeding sluggishly.  He was still shaking, gooseflesh rising on his arms, though the room was not cold._

Remus shrugged off his own robe and stepped into the shower, tugging on Sirius's arm until the other man joined him under the hot spray.  Pink-tinted water swirled down the drain as the blood on Sirius's skin and in his hair was sluiced off.  Now that they were back home, now that everything was over, Remus felt himself begin to shiver as well, delayed reaction catching up with him.  For a few terrifying minutes, back in the office, he had feared that Sirius might be dead.  That he would be left abandoned and packless, alone, forced to seek in vain for a new mate.  A mate he would never find.  No one but Sirius could fill up all of the empty places inside of him, satisfy both man and wolf, until the two almost seemed to blend into a harmonious whole.  

As the hot water poured down and the steam rose up around them, Remus reached for a washcloth and began to scrub the last remnants of blood off of his lover's body, cleaning gently along the edges of the cut.

"When Lily and I heard that there were aurors down… They didn't say who it was.  They just said 'Black.'  Oh God, Padfoot, I was so afraid it was you."  The words spilled out of him suddenly, like a dam breaking.

Sirius reached up and took hold of his hand, halting the scrubbing and gently pulling the washcloth away, dropping it on the floor of the shower.  "I promised I'd be careful, remember?  My word to my pack leader."  He stepped forward, arms coming up around Remus.  "F'r a moment, back at the, at the McKinnons', I was afraid I was gonna die and never see you again," he whispered.  "I never break promises.  I don' wanna start."

The two of them stayed in the shower long past the point when the last of the blood had been washed away, stayed until their skin had grown flushed from the heat and the water was beginning to run cooler as the hot water tanks emptied, holding each other until they both had stopped shaking.

_We make love, too hard, too fast_  
_He falls asleep, his face a mask_  
_He wakes with the shakes and he drinks from his flask_  
_I put my arms around him_  
  


_Hold me 'neath the London skies  
__Let's not talk of how or why  
__Tomorrow's soon enough to die  
__But right now the war is over.___

^_~


	5. Trust

****

DISCLAIMER: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended. The song "1917," excerpts from which appear at the beginning and end of this fic, belongs to David Olney and Emmylou Harris. The full lyrics can be found at . The last bit, by the way, is part of a Latin prayer for the dead. Vesta McGonagall belongs to Draquonelle, who kindly lets me borrow her.

Posted by: Elspeth (AKA Elspethdixon).

****

Author notes: Warning: Still slash, still not part of "Scars." And this part is angstier that all previous chapters combined. It's also the last chapter. I have reached the end of the song and the end of the story.

Thanks again to the crew of the HMS Wolfstar and HMS For-Get-Me-Not, some of whom have waited untold amounts of time for this chapter, without ever nagging.

Part V: Trust

__

We make love, too hard, too fast  
He falls asleep, his face a mask  
He wakes with the shakes and he drinks from his flask  
I put my arms around him

Remus lay awake in the darkness, running his fingers slowly through tangles of soft, black hair. Sirius sighed in his sleep, pressing his face closer into Remus's chest. Asleep, he clung to Remus like a lost child desperately seeking comfort. Awake, he was become more and more preoccupied and distant. He still slept with Remus, still ran with him on the full moons, still dragged him out onto the balcony for impromptu astronomy lessons and teasingly threatened to pull down his mate's beloved David Bowie posters and replace them with pull-outs from motorcycle magazines, but there was pain in his eyes when he looked at him, and a slight hesitation in his voice at odd moments. And he had started drinking again. Not much, not every night like before, but often enough for Remus's hypersensitive Sirius/alcohol radar to pick it up. Remus wished he could blame it on the increasing casualties and heavy death tolls among the Aurors lately, or on worry for James & Lily, who had finally gone into hiding the previous week. Deep down, however, he knew it was neither. 

Moonlight mixed with city light pollution drifted in through the window, striping the bed sheets with tiger-patterns of light and dark and turning Sirius's bare neck and shoulders the colour of skim milk. They almost seemed to glow, as if the magic of the secret keeping spell were seeping out through his pores. Secrets. There had been too many secrets lately.

Remus could pinpoint the exact day the problems had started, a bare two months ago. He had gotten off work early, a minor miracle that was probably due to subtle nudging from Lily, who had noticed his usual post-moon exhaustion. On a whim, he had decided to swing by Auror Headquarters on the way home to surprise Sirius. Pausing outside the slightly open squad room door, he had heard the strains of what sounded like a serious conversation, and had hesitated, peering at Sirius and Vesta through the narrow gap between door and jamb. He hadn't wanted to interrupt an important briefing.

"The latest information from the Department of Mysteries' analysts indicates that there are at least two moles within the Ministry," Polaris had been saying. "One apparently called 'the Chessmaster,' and another one referred to by an interrogation subject as 'Iscariot.' The first is most likely someone high up in the Department of Mysteries itself." 

Sirius let out a whistle, and Vesta raised her eyebrows, but Polaris ignored them, forging on. "Disturbing as the implications of that are, this-called 'Iscariot' is even more worrisome. Judging by the nature of the information presumably leaked by him, he has very close ties to the Aurors, and with this squad in particular."

There was a moment of dead silence, finally broken by Denise's soft voice. "Then, the traitor is one of us?"

"Not necessarily," Vesta answered, before Polaris could get a word in. "I mean, Pub has no life outside of fighting the forces of evil, so it can't be her, and it can't be you and Frank either, since you're Hufflepuffs." She smirked slightly at Denise's rather affronted expression. "Hufflepuffs are too loyal to be double agents. If you were going to serve Voldemort, you'd go grovel at his feet and be disturbingly fanatical Death Eaters."

"I hate to say this, Vesta," Sirius broke in, "but someone's goin' to eventually, so it might as well be me. You're the only Slytherin on the squad. Well, except for Captain Moody, and he's spent too long fightin' Dark Wizards ever to turn. They wouldn't trust him if he showed up on Voldemort's doorstep with Dumbledore's head in a bushel basket."

"Do you honestly think that after the amount of time I spend doing my make-up, I'd hide this face under a mask?" Vesta arched reddish brows, gesturing at her painted lips and violet-dusted eyes. "Never mind that those loose, baggy robes would do nothing for me."

"It couldn't be Vesta," Polaris stated coldly. "She would never be trusted by them either. Once a Slytherin joins the Aurors, they're placed at the top of the Death Eaters' hit list. There have been two attempts on her life this month alone."

"Pub!" Vesta half-wailed, "You didn't have to tell them that!" She glared at Polaris, whose reaction, if any, was hidden from Remus by the door.

"Perhaps the information isn't being leaked on purpose," Polaris said, in what was probably an attempt to smooth things over. "Maybe someone on the squad is going out and getting drunk and accidentally spilling secrets to his numerous girlfriends."

Remus had almost spoken up then, filled with indignation that Polaris would dare imply that Sirius was a security risk. In retrospect, perhaps he should have. Then, the words that followed would never have been said.

Sirius jerked himself upright with indignation, hurt and anger filling those pale eyes. "I would never-"

Denise jumped in before he could finish, a rare display of rudeness from her. "Sarge, Baby Black would never do that. You don't reveal your secrets to a casual date. You only extent that sort of trust toward someone you're in an established relationship with." She laughed a little. "I'd probably be first on the suspect list myself if I weren't an Auror, being married to Frank."

There were more things said after that, but Remus didn't hear them. All he could focus on was the sudden look of horror on Sirius's face. A quickly hidden flash of utter misery, eyes widening with some terrible revelation. Don't listen at doors, his mother had always told him. You might not like what you hear. As his stomach sank through the bottom of his shoes, Remus had found himself wishing that he had followed her advice.

Now, as he tightened one arm around Sirius and stared up at the moonlit white ceiling, he couldn't help resenting Denise, just a little bit. If only she hadn't made that comment about Aurors' partners being security risks, the suspicion would never have been planted in Sirius's mind. He never talks about work around me anymore, Remus thought sadly. I have to hear everything from Peter.

Poor Wormtail, stuck serving as the communication link between a lonely Remus and a suspicious Sirius. Remus knew he'd taken to venting his worries on Peter lately, and he was almost certain Sirius was doing the same, now that James was no longer around to talk to. Now that he was hiding, gone completely from the wizarding world, so that the Death Eaters couldn't test their interrogation techniques on the first top secret courier ever to have a family, couldn't experiment to see just how long an Iris geas-bound never to reveal the ministry's secrets could hold out while his loved ones were being tortured in his place.

James. Everything came back to James, eventually. James, and Lily, and Harry, and the fragile web of magic that held their safety, woven into Sirius's soul. James and Sirius were as close as brothers, and little Harry was the son Sirius himself would never have. And so it only made sense that Prongs and Lily would pick Sirius as their secret keeper, when the dangers incurred by James's position as an Iris finally forced them into hiding. What didn't make sense what that they would keep it all secret from Remus until after the spell had already been cast.

Sirius had not told him about his decision to become James's secret keeper, a dangerous and irrevocable step, until it was too late to change things. He hadn't brought him in on the decision making process, just as he no longer told him what had happened on the job, or where the latest call was taking him out to, despite his obvious need to talk about the things he was forced to see and do. He no longer bounced theories off Remus as to who the Ministry's leak could be, and neither had Lily, in the last weeks before she disappeared.

There was no other conclusion. They didn't trust him. _Sirius thinks I'm the spy._

Sirius's words, whispered to him over a year ago, drifted through his mind. _"I wan' you to promise me. If they ever... ever come for you, promise you'll say yes."_

Sirius thought that they had come for him, that he had said yes. That he had buckled under blackmail, or succumbed to temptation, or been seduced over to Voldemort by his own intrinsic Dark nature, by the curse that lurked in his blood. The curse that now, according to the latest of the Aurors' mandatory bi-monthly blood tests, lurked within Sirius's veins as well, kept dormant by the animagus spell. Odd, that. Remus had thought that he half remembered hearing that Dark curses, latent or live, interfered with soul-binding spells such as the secret keeper one. Apparently, he'd remembered wrong. Which didn't mean that being a carrier for one of the most feared Dark infections in the wizarding world didn't interfere with other things. Sirius was still waiting for Moody to pull him from the squad and stick him on desk duty. Another source of tension between the two of them, as if Sirius's suspicion and Remus's own fear of acknowledging the topic, added to the resumption of Sirius's former drinking habits and his defensiveness when Remus confronted him about it, wasn't enough already.

Unconsciously, Remus's grip on his mate tightened further, and Sirius stirred in response, wrapping one arm around Remus's torso and burying his face in the junction between Remus's neck and shoulder before sliding back into deeper sleep. Remus inhaled the scent of Sirius's hair, fur and shampoo and the faint hint of cigarette smoke that never seemed to go away, and continued to stare up at the ceiling, watching the angle of the shadows slowly lengthen. Sirius suspected him, was cautious around him, had to fear that their relationship was a threat to James, Lily, and Harry's safety. And yet, despite this, he stayed. Why?

^_~

__

Three days later

Remus sat tensely in the front room of the flat, listening with one ear to the wizard wireless network, where reports of new raids were being updated hourly, and with the other, for the tell tale whisper of Sirius's running shoes on the stairs.

In the past two days, the Death Eaters had launched a rash of attacks, pushing all Aurors and ministry workers into frantic overtime as they scramble to reach the latest target or predict the next one. Sirius had been out on call for nearly forty-eight hours. Remus himself had only just returned home from a triple shift, to find the flat empty and silent, without so much as a note from his mate. There would have been one, once, even if it were only a scrap of paper with a sentence hastily scrawled between sorties, left in the box out front (postage due) by one of the Ministry's overworked owls.

He was on the verge of taking his out his frustration at the WWN's censors--who never allowed Auror casualties to be announced on the air--on the old spell-converted Muggle radio when the door slammed open to reveal Sirius, gold robes muddy and disheveled and eyes bloodshot.

"Sweet, sufferin' Christ," he groaned, kicking the door shut behind him with one foot and reaching up to tug open the neck of his robes. "Forty-six solid bloody hours. I feel like absolute hell."

"Are you alright?" Remus was up out of the chair and across the room in an instant--just in time to be handed Sirius's discarded robes, as he stripped down to jeans and rugby shirt and flopped bonelessly into an armchair. Remus dropped the armful of gold silk on the back of the couch and sat down on the armrest of Sirius's chair. "Are you alright?" he repeated.

"What? Oh, yeah. Just tired." Sirius reached up to rub at his eyes, then pulled the rather silly-looking black Muggle ponytail-holder from his hair and scrubbed his fingers through it. "God, today's been 'orrid. And yesterday too. Five civilian casualties so far, an' we only caught three of the bastards." He yawned, then added. "All low level, cannon fodder. We think. I 'exed one who 'asn't woken up yet. Can't pull my punches when I'm tired. Moody sent me 'ome." His accent was unusually strong, 'h's vanishing and consonants mushing together, the way they sometimes did after a few drinks. _He has to be close to dropping in his tracks with exhaustion._

"Good," Remus said. "That he sent you home, I mean, not that… It's not good that those people died." He shook his head, breaking the inevitable _Who was it? Do I know them? What happened? _train of thought. "When was the last time you ate something, not counting that horrible caffeinated sludge everyone drinks at Auror headquarters?"

"This mornin'?" It was a question.

"Sirius!" The sound exploded out before Remus could stop himself. "It's eleven o' clock at night."

"We were busy." 

"Everyone was stretched at the Department of Mysteries today, too. Usually, Peter comes around during lunchtime, or fifteen-minute dinner break, or whichever and helps Lily and I sort things, but he wasn't there today."

"Wormtail wasn' at work?" Sirius stiffened, snapping the question out in a sharp, wary voice. He sat upright in the chair, pulling himself out of his sagging sprawl. "You sure?"

"Yes. I went looking for him when I had a break, to talk to him about something." _To ask him if I ought to confront you about suspecting me. If I should get it all out in the open, stop pretending I don't notice… _"He wasn't there. I asked if he'd called in sick, but Linda, the Ravenclaw girl who works in the finance department, didn't know."

"But she's 'is coworker," Sirius protested. "An' what's more, I think she likes 'im. If 'e wasn' there, she'd find out why."

"She was probably too busy." Remus shrugged, and turned his attention to the mass of tangles that was Sirius's hair, pulling fingers through lank snarls. It was a poor substitute for the comforting licking a small and very canine part of him wanted to deliver, but it would do.

"Ow. Moony, that 'urts." Sirius pulled his head away, removing his hair from finger range. "I'm gonna go an' check on Petey."

"You're not going anywhere except to bed," Remus returned. "You look tired enough to splinch yourself Apparating."

"I'll take Bike, then." Sirius stood up. "If somethin's 'appened to Peter, it's probably my fault, and-" he cut himself off sharply. A few weeks ago, he wouldn't have censored himself around Remus. "Look, I'm goin', okay." He snagged the discarded Auror's robe off the back of the couch and shrugged back into it.

"Then at least let me come with you."

Sirius blinked at him for a moment, as if unsure of how to answer, then shook his head. "I can't. If Peter's in trouble… It could be dangerous." Pathetic excuse. Sirius ought to be able to lie better than that.

__

All right. That's it. Remus had had enough. Weeks of silent hurt and sublimated resentment sparked into sudden anger. He was tired of being mistrusted for betrayals he had never committed, tired of questions being evaded, secrets being kept from him, tired of unspoken accusation. "You think I'm the spy, don't you?" he demanded. "You don't want me to come because you're afraid I'm Iscariot, that if Peter is in trouble, I'll help _them_ and not him."

Sirius shook his head in involuntary denial. "Of course not. How could I think that? _Why_ would I?" But he didn't meet Remus's eyes.

"Then let me come. Or better yet, stay here. We can go check on Peter in the morning."

Sirius's eyes darted toward the radio, a flicker that as good as shouted that Peter might even now be under attack by Death Eaters—highly unlikely, but not impossible.

"You can't come," Sirius repeated. "I've got to go by myself." He took a step towards the door.

Remus caught him by the elbow. "At least tell me why you're so bloody worried," he demanded. He could hear his voice rising, anger sneaking out into the open.

Sirius jerked his arm away, and his voice held anger of its own when he answered, "Do you honestly think I'd tell you?"

The question hung between them, heavy with pain and suspicion. The accusations had finally been voiced. The issue brought out into the open, where it could no longer be brushed off or ignored.

"Yes!" Remus yelled. The blatant lack of trust implied by Sirius's statement felt as if were boring a hole through the center of his chest, as if the scent of it, anger and aggression and pain, were burning his nose away. "You're either going to tell me what's going on, take me with you, or stay here, damnit!" 

He knew it was a mistake as soon as he said it, knew that Sirius always responded to anger with more anger, to violence with more violence, but by then it was too late. The words had already emerged, prompted by something fanged and clawed, which was driven to dominate and possess.

"The 'ell I will!" Sirius thundered back. He'd drawn himself up to his full height, and for the first time in a long time it dawned on Remus just how much larger than him his mate was. Sirius had a good six inches on him, outweighed him, and had the benefit of Moody's extensive unarmed combat training. "I'm not your bitch, Remus. You can't tell me what to do!"

"No, you're my beta. I'm your pack leader, and I can order you if I want to!" He could feel himself snarling, lips drawing back from teeth, a growl forming deep within his throat. Human vocal chords couldn't make that sort of noise. His could. Sirius's could. And they were now.

Sirius's eyes had gone beyond feral, filled with a pale light that made him look more like his sister Polaris than Remus had previously thought possible. _He's challenging you_, a voice growled in the depths of his mind. _You're dominant. Don't let him get away with it._ But a somewhat louder voice was babbling desperately over it: _Oh Lord, oh Lord he looks scary as hell and he's going to kill me and why, why, why did I say that?_

"Don't say that." It was a snarl, low and edged with the promise of fangs. "Don't say that!" A howl. "We're 'uman! I'm 'uman! I won' let Padfoot think for me anymore." A fist slammed into the doorframe, startlingly loud. Remus jumped, half-surprised that the target hadn't been his face. "I'm takin' Bike and goin'!"

"If you don't love me enough to trust me, don't come back!"

The only answer was the slamming of the flat door, followed by the thudding of feet on the stairs, fast and angry now, instead of tired. Moments later, a motorcycle engine coughed to life, roaring loudly as only a machine with a sawn-off muffler can.

Sirius had run away. Running meant defeat. The first to back down was always the loser. So why did it feel like Remus had lost? _He hates me now. He thinks I'm a traitor, was only waiting for an excuse to leave. He's not coming back._ Eyes suspiciously hot, he stared blankly at the closed door and wanted to howl.

^_~

__

Padfoot

The Black Bitch roared to life underneath him, a sudden explosion of noise that harmonized with his own violent mood. She was angry too, or at least sounded it. Angry, and straining to go.

The two of them exploded into the sky, without a moment wasted on invisibility charms, and a snarled phrase Apparated the pair of them away, a long, cold blink of disorientation that caused pistons to stutter and tired thoughts to swim. Then they fell out of the sky three blocks away from Peter's flat, and order returned, bringing sanity with it.

__

"If you don't love me enough to trust me, don't come back!"

Trust. Trust had seduced him into this mess, tangling loyalties until he'd become too bound up in conflicting allegiances to be a reliable secret keeper, even if he'd trusted his own courage, which he hadn't. He'd crack under torture, or spill secrets while drunk, or tell all to Remus. He'd been terrified that all Remus had to do was ask, and then James and Lily's secret would have been laid in his lap, like any other burden to heavy to carry, and then it would all be in Voldemort's hands. So he had given the burden to Peter, quiet, unlikely Peter whom no one would ever suspect. Peter, who hadn't been at work today. If the Death Eaters had gotten to him…

__

If they found him, if they hurt him, it will be all my fault. And then they'll find James and Lily. My fault. All mine. I should have Kept the secret after all. It can't be as dangerous for a curse victim to Keep one as they say.

That was what else trust had gotten him. The lab results that had made Lieutenant Longbottom shake his head sorrowfully, and Vesta yell in protective anger, and had made Captain Moody call him into his office to explain that, though he seemed to be one of the lucky ones for whom the curse stayed dormant, it was a risk keeping him on the squad. A worthwhile one at the moment, but one slip up, and… Maybe he'd been angrier about that than he'd admitted. 

He shouldn't have yelled. Because maybe, maybe Iscariot wasn't Remus. His eyes had been so hurt when Sirius had accused him, so filled with pain. Beautiful gold eyes that shouldn't be allowed to look sorrowful. He'd been indignant, injured, just as if he were truly innocent. _What if I made a mistake?_

He wanted a fucking drink. Just one—okay a lot more than one. Enough to blur the edges off the pain, until he could no longer remember that he couldn't trust Remus, couldn't trust himself, damn near bathed in blood every day until it was a wonder the scent of it didn't seep out of his pours, had maybe lost Remus forever.

He'd probably overreacted, he decided, as he braked the Bitch to a halt in front of Peter's building, jumping off her and heading for the concrete steps and red-painted door. He'd over-reacted, jumped to conclusions when he'd heard of Peter's absence today, blown up at Remus because exhaustion and stress had finally pushed him over the edge. He couldn't think straight tired, everyone on the squad knew it. That was why Moody had sent him home in the first place, wasn't it?

The doorknob was cool in his palm as he twisted it open—the night was chilly for October—or was it already November? Midnight had to be soon.

He'd over-reacted, Sirius told himself, as he began climbing the steps to Peter's flat, footsteps muffled by the carpeting. Carpeting in the stairwell was a good idea. They should get some installed at home.

__

Home. He couldn't go home. _Remus threw me out. We'll get in another fight if I go back._

He'd over-reacted, which meant that when he opened the door, Peter would be there. There, with a box of tissues and a mug of tea, nursing a cold or flu miserable enough to have kept him from work and irritated as hell at Sirius for barging in on him at this time of night. And Sirius would apologize, and act chastened, and explain that he'd been worried, and had had a fight with Remus, and he couldn't go to James's because he didn't know where James was, and could he please sleep here tonight. And Peter would whine, and call him an inconsiderate bastard, and say yes, of course, and there's beer in the refrigerator, do you want some? And Sirius would drink it—just this once, because today had truly been a sod in every conceivable way—and tell Wormtail that he'd made a mistake, and Remus might not be Iscariot, which meant he'd mistrusted him for no bloody reason, and now his pack leader had thrown him out, and he didn't know whether to crawl back on his belly or stay angry, because crawling would be humiliating, but it was what you were supposed to do when you were wrong, crawl and show your throat. And Peter would sigh in exasperation and ask why all canine animagi went crazy, when turning into a rat hadn't bunged up _his_ psyche, and Sirius would say that that was because he'd always been a rat, and, and Peter's flat was empty.

Peter's flat was empty.

Sirius froze in the doorway, eyes taking in the vacant room. Nearly as cluttered as his own—Peter had always tended to collect things—but more organized. Still organized. There were no signs of a struggle, no overturned end tables or broken lamps… Auror training began to kick in, impelling him round the flat, forcing him through the routine of checking for evidence. Bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, all normal. Normal, but empty. Too empty.

Beneath the thin ice of calm lent by familiar procedure, a torrent of panic ran though his mind. _Where is he? Where is he?_ His books were there, the refrigerator was full, but, but… His toothbrush was gone. And so was his suitcase.

Quicker than thought, Sirius became Padfoot, and nose replaced eyes and fingers, a faster and more thorough searcher. He'd never done this at a raid site, but no raid site had ever been so vital. As Padfoot, the desire to run back to Remus and beg forgiveness was even stronger—Padfoot had always followed Moony, since they'd first met four years ago—but finding out where Peter was, and whether James and Lily were still safe, was more important.

The room didn't smell of violence. There was no blood, neither Peter's nor anyone else's. Instead, there was merely the scent of Peter, as both man and rat. And other people, including several scents he'd smelled before, though only once, sniffing around an old raid site two nights after it had happened. God knew why he'd done it—some half formed notion that he could pick up the scent of Death Eaters, though he'd never be able to use _that_ in an investigation. But now he was. _Death Eaters have been in Petey's flat. Recently. Less than a day ago._ But before that, too, many times. The whole flat bore their scent.

And then he knew.

^_~

__

Moony

Minutes slid into hours and still Remus sat motionless in the small living room. Sirius had left. Sirius had actually left. _And he's not coming back._

Deep inside Remus, some little part of him had never really expected Sirius too disobey him. Not on something this important, not when he flat out demanded that he do something. Sirius might ignore advice, requests, and even direct orders when he chose to, especially when said advice involved his own personal safety, but when it came down to it, he had always given in to Remus when it really mattered. Of course, screaming at him hadn't exactly been the best possible course of action.

Now that the fight was over, now that he had cooled down, Remus found himself desperately wishing that he could take back the previous few hours, unsay all of the shouted, hurtful things and replace them with calm, reasonable arguments. Alone in the darkened room, he came up with dozens of things that he should have said. Only now, of course, it was too late. 

After the regrets came half-drafted apologies, tangling together with imaginary explanations. Sirius would come back, he had to, and when he did, Remus would be ready. Only he didn't come back. Midnight became one a.m. became two a.m. became three, and still Sirius had not returned. Most likely, he was crashing at Peter's flat, still too angry to come home, which meant that Remus would have to find him later at Auror Headquarters. Unless Peter really _was_ in trouble. That was an option he didn't really want to consider, but one that whispered insidiously in the corners of his mind as the night wore on. His eyelids were heavy with tiredness, but with _that_ worry in his mind, sleep was impossible. Which meant that when the announcement came over the Wizard Wireless at five a.m., he was awake to hear it.

Three minutes after the bulletin announcing Voldemort's suspected death rang out over the enchanted airways, he had Apparated into the parking lot of Auror Headquarters, completely disregarding his earlier warnings to Sirius on the dangers of Apparating while exhausted. The place was in an uproar, reporters and officials everywhere, crowding to get into the doors, with more people Apparating in every moment. Pushing his way past a curly-haired woman in her early thirties wearing a spectacularly gaudy pair of spectacles, he caught the arm of the hit wizard standing by the door.

"Let me in, I'm a Ministry employee." Granted, he didn't look much like one at the moment, dressed in rumpled robes and lacking badge or insignia, but at least he didn't have a camera.

The hit wizard shrugged, and pulled the door open a crack. "Go on in, but it's on your head if you turn out to be a journalist in mufti. The last paparazzi who bothered Captain Moody went sailing out of here with his camera magically implanted up his-"

"Remus!" A green-nailed hand shot through the open door and grabbed his wrist, and he found himself dragged inside to face a severely frazzled-looking Vesta McGonagall. She wasn't even wearing any make-up, and her face looked naked and unusually young without it.

"Do you know where Baby Black is?" she demanded.

Remus blinked. _Sirius?_ Sirius was at Peter's, probably asleep with a half-empty bottle of something alcoholic in his hand and missing the biggest victory of the war.

"Is it true?" he demanded in turn, not answering her. "Is, is You Know Who really gone? They said on the wireless that…"

"Gone, toast, yesterday's haggis," she said impatiently, waving one hand in the air. "We've been pulling in Death Eaters for the past three hours—apparently they all passed out when he, well, when whatever it was happened to him." Her face changed, and her eyes dropped to the floor. "He… Lupin, I'm not sure how to tell you this."

Remus wasn't listening. Nothing had penetrated after her first sentence. "He's gone? Really and truly gone? Dead gone?" He could feel an uncontrollable smile spreading across his face. Sirius ought to be here. He would have dipped that ungrateful, Auror bastard backwards and kissed him within an inch of his life, just like that nurse and sailor in Times Square, and never mind the dozens of people watching_. Everything's going to be all right now. James and Lily won't have to hide anymore, Sirius won't have to fight anymore, everyone will stop being suspicious of me…_

Then the look on Vesta's face registered. "What? He is gone, right?"

"They, we, think he tried to AK someone only to have it backfire. He sort of, blew up. At least, that's what the Captain says. The entire raid site was destroyed, with only one survivor." She still was not looking at him, green eyes focused determinedly on her nails, which she was inspecting as though discovering a single chip in their lacquer would mean the end of the world. "Lupin… he attacked the Potters. James and Lily are dead, and Black hasn't Apparated in, even though we've been paging him for hours."

__

"James and Lily are dead."

The words echoed in his ears, their meaning not quite penetrating. Surely she was not serious. This had to be another one of her practical jokes, like the time she'd left an article about the mating habits of wolves in Sirius's locker. Perhaps this sort of thing seemed funny to a Slytherin.

"What?"

"Potter and his wife are dead, and your boyfriend's missing," she repeated. "I, oh damnit, I shouldn't be the one telling you this. This ought to be the Lieutenant's job."

Remus gaped at her, stomach plummeting. His ears felt hot, sounds ringing in them as if they came from far away. Seconds ago, he had been filled with a joy so great that he wanted to howl with triumph, and now. _James and Lily, dead. And Sirius…_

"What about Harry? What about Sirius? What do you mean, missing?"

As she started to explain, Remus felt his stomach sinking even further. His mind barely focused on what Vesta said about Harry, once she revealed that he was alive and not dead like his parents. _James and Lily._ Sirius was MIA, and Sirius had been James and Lily's Secret Keeper, which meant that in order for their house to be attacked… _Oh God. I should have gone with him. I should have. Whether he wanted me to or not. I should have stopped him somehow._

"Lupin, if you don't know where he is…" Vesta shut her eyes for a moment, for all the world as if she were fighting back tears. "He would never have given the Potters up willingly. Whose bloody brilliant idea was it to make an Auror a Secret Keeper?"

"His." Remus heard his own voice as if from far away. Vesta's words were only confirmation of what he already knew. Confirmation he didn't want to hear.

"Well isn't that just typical. 'Look at me; I'm Sirius Black, alcoholic and chain smoker. I'll die by hexing years before my lungs and liver dissolve." Her voice began to go shrill. "I'm a masochistic berserker with a death wish who lets his werewolf lover chew on his neck and hangs a giant target sign around it telling Voldie's minions to come and get me!" It was only when she ground down to a final hand-waving halt that she seemed to realize that said werewolf lover was standing right in front of her. "I'm sorry, Lupin. We're all worried sick, and the press is trying to break down the door. Pub's been locked in Arctic Bitch mode since the news broke."

Remus nodded absently. It wasn't important. The important things were Lily and James and Sirius. Who was going to take care of Harry now, with his parents and Godfather all… _Did it hurt? Did he scream when they took him? How long did they hurt him before he told them where to go?_

"I'd break," Sirius's voice drifted through his head. _"I know I would. I'd tell 'em whatever they wanted. An' then they'd go after James an' Lily. An' Petey. An' you. An' I'd rather die than have that happen."_

"Lupin?" Vesta's voice sounded concerned. "Lupin, are you alright?" A hand touched his arm. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have just told you right out like that. Come into the squad room and sit down."

Vesta's hands steered him towards the squad room, where a collection of haggard-faced people in golden robes were gathered around a wizard wireless, a scattering of brown-robed Hit Wizards sprinkled among them. Most of the Hit Wizards were exuberant, but the Aurors all looked brittle, faces worried and voices strained. Denise Longbottom was in tears, and Polaris looked as grim as he'd ever seen her. Little details seemed to jump out at him. Her hair was not braided, he noted. She looked as naked with loose hair as Vesta did without eyeliner. It curled over her shoulders instead of falling into her face in feathery wisps like her brother's, but those pale, hard eyes were all too reminiscent of Sirius the last time Remus had seen him. 

He sank numbly into the chair Vesta pushed him towards, knees almost folding under him. The babble of voices from the group by the wireless seemed to make no sense, meaningless noise that had nothing to do with him. They were all dead. What good was defeating Voldemort if they were dead? 

Remus was never sure just how long he sat there, letting the crowd of Magical Law Enforcement officers drift around him. Eventually, it occurred to him that someone ought to try and contact Peter, but moving was simply too much effort at the moment. Better to sit, still and small enough to be ignored. If anyone spoke to him, he knew he'd start to cry. Or howl. When the wireless crackled to life, he didn't even bother listening to it. Until he heard the words "explosion" and "destructive magic."

Head coming up, he refocused on the sounds from across the room. "What? What are they saying?"

"Half a street's been blown up in one of the London suburbs," Frank Longbottom told him. "Vesta, go with them." He waved a hand at the group of Hit Wizard rushing for the door, already in mid-scramble. "It might be a Death Eater."

"I could-" Polaris started.

"We want them all alive, Pub." From Frank, that was perilously close to cruelty. "You're on interrogation only until Baby Black is found. Moody's orders."

Suddenly unable to sit still any longer, Remus jumped to his feet and started after Vesta. He caught up with her in three strides—he'd never been tall, but she was significantly shorter—following her silently out the door and down the hall to the deployment room, the ward-walled chamber that was the only site in the building where Disapparation was possible.

She glanced over her shoulder at him as they entered on the Hit Wizards' heels. "You think it's Baby Black." It was not a question. "Trying to escape?"

Remus nodded. He didn't trust his voice, didn't trust whatever sound might come out of his mouth. It could be a growl or whimper as easily as a word. He took hold of Vesta's arm as she Apparated, letting her do the work. Anyone else among Sirius's squad mates would probably have pried Remus's fingers away and left him behind—no civilians at crime scenes—but Vesta was Slytherin, and had probably lost more friends to the war than any Gryffindor or Hufflepuff. And she knew about Sirius and him.

They Apparated into a haze of smoke, in the midst of a cluster of shocked-looking Hit Wizards. On the fringes of the group, a portly man in a pinstriped cloak was on his knees, vomiting.

"The Junior Minister from the Department of Magical Catastrophes," Vesta snorted, practically in his ear. "Later he'll be saying he was first on the scene, the useless bag of wind."

Faint, early morning light was filtering through the smoke, illuminating piles of charred rubble. People lay motionless, limp bundles of clothes splashed with blood. One woman—Remus thought it was a woman—lay with her skull crushed, her brains leaking out onto the pavement. He felt sick, suddenly completely in sympathy with the still vomiting functionary. _Sirius sees this sort of thing every day_, he realized, a cold, inadequate feeling springing up in the pit of his stomach. _No wonder he drinks_.

Then a sound filtered through his consciousness, and he looked up from the rubble to see a figure at the other end of the street, pulling himself painfully upright from where the explosion had presumably thrown him. His hair was hanging in snarls around his face, his robes were singed, ripped, and bloody, and he was laughing. A low, harsh laughter, half sob and half eerie chuckle, that made the hairs on the back of Remus's neck rise.

He stared at the apparition in horror, bereft of speech. Those smoke-scorched robes were golden as sunset, hanging open over jeans and a rugby shirt—both black. And that laughter held echoes of a sound he remembered from Quidditch matches, when Gryffindor's Beater had thrown himself at bludgers with a complete lack of regard for his own safety. Sirius. Sirius with a wand in his hand and a mad light in his eyes.

Around him, Hit Wizards gasped and whispered, still orienting themselves after Apparating. Most of them were staring at Sirius with something approaching terror, hands going automatically to wands.

"He waved his arm," a man in a business suit was moaning. "Just waved it. And everything blew up. Everything blew up. What is he? What in the bloody hell is he?"

One of the Hit Wizards had his wand out of its holster, lips trying to frame a spell, though the hands holding the length of wood out in front of him were shaking.

Vesta's voice cracked across the gathering like a whip.

"Nobody move. If any one of you so much as twitches, he'll rip out your throat with a cutting curse. I've seen him do it."

The one with the wand turned towards her, the strip of a police sergeant showing on his sleeve as he moved. His wand stayed trained on Sirius. "An Auror." His eyes gave her a once-over, taking in the wand held low by her side. "Always butting in-" he broke off. "You can use the Killing Curse on him. Take him down from here. It's the only spell with enough range."

"NO." Her voice was iron, flat and absolute. Remus stared at the man in horror_. Kill Sirius?_

"You have too. It's obvious he's done it. We have to stop him before he gets his wind back and takes us all out. You're the only one here with the authorization."

"Aurors don't kill their own." 

The man glowered at Vesta, ready to argue, then switched the target of his glare as Remus stepped forward from behind her.

"Get this civilian out of here-" he began. Remus did not listen. They couldn't kill Sirius. _Not even if…_ He couldn't have done this. Couldn't have. But he was the only one standing. With his wand out. And laughing that horrible, horrible laugh. And the Hit Wizard who'd spoken had his wand aimed.

And so Remus did something that he would hate himself for for the rest of his life. He walked forward until he stood in front of the groups of Hit Wizards and screamed, "Padfoot, drop it now." 

His voice rang across the devastated street, a barely human sound, more a snarl sliding into a howl than words. The fingers of Sirius's left hand sprang apart as if with a will of their own, and his wand clattered to the pavement. His eyes met Remus's, as if he were noticing him for the first time, and he began to laugh harder, hysterical howls edged with sobs. And then the Hit Wizards surged forward to take him.

^_~

__

Twenty-seven hours later.

"Auror First Class Sirius Orion Black, it is the decision of this Court Martial that you be given life in Azkaban." The words rang through the chamber, echoing off the walls. The handful of people that composed an Auror's court-martial did not fill the space enough to deaden sound. Sirius, cuffed motionless to the chair beside the dais, didn't even twitch. He hadn't spoken once since the proceedings began. There was no point in questioning him, the Ministry's prosecutor had said. All Aurors had a magically induced allergic reaction to Veritaserum and other truth potions. A fatal one. They could not be drugged into spilling secrets to the enemy, and they also could not be trusted to give viable testimony in their own defence. Not that that was allowed at a hearing to determine sentencing. That was for trials, and there was obviously no need for one of those here. It would only bring unwanted publicity.

Remus did not like the Ministry's prosecutor. In fact, he hated him. Ripping Bartemius Crouch's throat out with his fangs and howling over the man's twitching corpse would have been a very pleasurable way to spend the next full moon. He could almost taste the man's blood in his mouth, imagining the way he would scream—and then the sound of those words washed over him. "Life in Azkaban."

"Sirius Black, you no longer hold rank in the Auror Corps, you no longer hold any rights under wizarding law, you no longer hold claim to any property or title. Sirius Black, you are dead in the eyes of the Law. Dead in body, dead in spirit, dead in name. All you possess will go to your next of kin, and you will go to the isle of Azkaban, there to remain until your mortal shell crumbles to dust. May the gods have mercy on your soul."

Sirius stared straight ahead; barely seeming to hear the words Crouch spoke. Maybe he did not. He had not spoken since being arrested, they said. Arrested for killing Peter. Little Peter, who would have had barely a chance against Sirius's skill, now dead at his hands. There hadn't even been a body, just a finger.

Wolves who turned on their own pack were driven out. Driven out and killed, if necessary, for the safety of the rest. But the rest were all dead. Dead because of Sirius.

The Longbottoms said he must have been under the Imperius, Vesta thought he'd been tortured or blackmailed, Polaris had decided he'd been Voldemort's creature all along—she'd said as much when she testified. Remus didn't know what to think. Sirius was packmate, betrayer, lover, and murderer. He had kissed those lips, the same lips that had spilled the location of James's hiding place to the Death Eaters, lost himself in that body, hot and strong and submissive beneath him. Those hands had rubbed sore muscles and bandaged injuries after every full moon. And those same hands had killed Peter and twelve innocent Muggles.

He deserved Azkaban, surely he deserved it. So why did something in Remus want to cry out, to scream at the court to stop, to take it back, to let Sirius go free? He squashed that small, bleeding voice into a tiny corner of his heart, watching silently as two robed figures glided into the room, waves of cold rolling off them. Sirius came awake then, head snapping up and eyes rounding as they approached him, cringing back against the seat. His face, already pale, drained to grey, until it looked as if he were indeed already dead.

The creatures stopped a few yards away from him, waiting with inhuman patience. Motionless, soundless, like snakes waiting to strike. The cuffs holding Sirius to the chair sprang open, and even from across the courtroom, Remus could see his throat working as he swallowed. The bailiffs started to move forward, ready to drag the unwilling prisoner off to join the Dementors, and then Sirius stood. Walking with staggering steps, like a man dealt a deadly injury, he moved slowly toward the Dementors, manacles dragging at his wrists. He stopped several feel from them, and the two things moved to flank him, escorting him out of the room and from there presumably to the boat that would take them to Azkaban, crossing what was actually a strip of the North Sea but might as well have been the river Styx.

And through it all, Remus didn't make a sound. He couldn't. He could only watch that tall, lean frame, that black head, those torn and scorched golden robes, until the doors closed and Sirius disappeared from his life, from mortal existence, forever.

And then one of the bailiffs walked over to where Remus sat and waved him down to the chamber floor. Numbly, he complied. They had already questioned him, forcing his answers with the truth potions they had been unable to give Sirius. Perhaps they hadn't really meant it when they had released him. Perhaps they were going to try him now. Try him, and sentence him, and declare him as dead physically as he was inside. Werewolves didn't go to Azkaban. They were put down, like the animals they were. Some had argued that fate for Sirius, claiming the curse in his blood made him legally lycanthropic despite the fact that he'd never manifested any signs of the change. It had been dismissed as too merciful.

The bailiff crossed to where Remus hovered uncertainly on the edge of the chamber floor and stood before him for a long, silent moment. "Remus J. Lupin, you are aware that you were Sirius Black's next of kin?"

Remus couldn't answer, only shook his head silently. The man's use of the past tense was like a knife in the gut, spreading a sharp, stabbing agony through him. An agony that died to a dull, steady ache. Behind him, he heard Polaris make a noise that sounded oddly like a stunned gasp. 

"How…"

"He had it changed a year ago." The man shrugged slightly. What traitorous Aurors chose write on their medical forms was nothing to him. Then he held something out to Remus, proffering it with an air of great ceremony. "As Mr. Black's next of kin, it is your right to break his wand. We can always burn the pieces unbroken, but we'd prefer to follow the proper ceremony. Best for everybody."

Remus's hand seemed to move without input from his brain, reaching out to grasp the slender object and bring it towards him.

He stood motionless, staring at the length of wood in his hands. Thirteen inches of dogwood and Hebridian Black heartstring, flexible, but likely to snap if bent too hard. The smooth, pale wood felt like silk against his fingers, the balance perfect. It was the same length as his own wand, down to the last millimeter. Everyone was staring at him. _Break it, Remus. It's only wood. Just a little pressure, bend the ends toward each other…_

He couldn't do it. Couldn't bring himself to cross that last, final line.

In the end, it didn't matter. Before he could nerve himself up to break the fragile length of dogwood, a pair of callused and slightly bony hands snatched it from his grip. The sound of the wood splintering was louder than he had expected it to be, echoing through the chamber like the report of a Muggle handgun.

Without a word, Polaris Black threw her brother's shattered wand to the floor and turned on her heel to go. Her boot heels clacked angrily against the marble flagstones as she walked away from then, and she never once turned to look back. But then, perhaps she had something to look forward towards.

__

Oh I'd pray for him, but I've forgotten how  
And there is nothing, nothing that can save him now  
With those haunted eyes, and that funny bow  
And who was I to deny him?

Lux aeterna Luce-at eis  
Domine cum sanctic tuis in aeternum  
Quia pius es  
Requiem aeternaum dona eis Domine  
Quia pius es  
Requiem aeternaum dona eis Domine  
Quia pius es  
Et lux perpetua luceat eis Cum sancris tuis in  
Aeternum quia pius es  
Tonight the war is over.

^_~

Thank you to everyone who reviewed me, and my humblest apologies for taking so long to get this last chapter posted here--it was actually finished a couple of months ago, but I put it up on Fiction Alley and my webpage and forgot about here.

****

SH, Stormyfire, Lunard, & Clicks: Thanks! I'm glad you like it, and I'm really sorry that it took so long to get chapter five up. This one's the last chapter, BTW.

****

Autumns Ashes & Durgas Dragon: Thanks! I've spent a lot of time studying WWII and the (American) Civil War, and I've always been interested in military stuff, so a lot of that wartime atmosphere ended up in here. I'm glad y'all thought it was realistic.

****

Merlin's Quill: Thank you, thanks you! *bows back, and blushes at the compliment * Yes, Sirius and Remus are the best slash pairing, aren't they?

****

Alla & Liara: Thank You! I worked hard to try and get the characterization and the interaction between the Puppies right. About the two reuniting: sorry, this story ends with Sirius's imprisonment. However, once Order of the Phoenix comes out and gives me some new material, I may write a follow up story. And, Liara, you're right about the LFO song. I'd never heard it before but I looked the lyrics up, and they do fit.

****

M.E.: Thank You! This is your favourite R/S fic? Really? *squeals in glee *


End file.
